Dad
by quondam
Summary: Sequel to 'Uncle.' Garrus and Shepard finally settle down and become parents, despite all the struggles that come with it.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Notes: This fic is a sequel to my other story 'Uncle.' It was written by request of the commenters of the masseffectkink meme on LJ who wanted to see what became of the Shepard and Garrus of that story. It's pretty fluffy, so, fair warning! While 'Uncle' isn't required reading for this story, I'd highly recommend it, since there are many details in that story that lay down the foundation and framework for this one.  
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_**Present. Earth.**_

The sun was setting, later and later each day, as Shepard leaned over the edge of the wooden railed balcony. Down below the home, on past the trees and foliage and the critters that found their habitat there, was a small bay, its surface calm and glassy as the day gave way to night. There was a rickety staircase off the decking that cut through the flora, a steep and treacherous climb even for her as of late, but the work more than paid off when it deposited you at the bottom of the hillside and on the sand of the small beach. Shepard climbed it twice a day, at minimum, even when the humidity set off a particularly bad ache in her knee or the weather grew unseasonably cool. Warm and tropical, or as close to it as they'd ever get: check.

The first night they'd settled there, Shepard had come out to that very porch, stood in the same spot. It had been barren then, missing the pieces of aging patio furniture that had seen better days now, but felt just as much like home as it did years later. The silence was what got to her most of all, the subtle roll of waves at the shore, the rustling of leaves, sounds of birds and bugs, all of it replacing the constant hum of engines and a ship alive in its own way under her feet.

Shepard raised her eyes to the sky above, the glimmer of stars already shining bright as the sky settled into navy blue tones. There were some days she missed it: the Normandy and camaraderie in the people that served both under and alongside her, maybe even the call to the _mission_, whatever it was on any given day. She had a place back then, a place where she'd belonged, but as the sound of laughter echoed out from the glass porch door cracked ajar behind her, it was an easy reminder that she had just as much here as she did before.

Back inside and shutting the door behind her—the house a perfectly preserved piece of architecture, a nod back to days even long before her time, with doors on hinges and details made out of carved pieces of wood rather than metal—Shepard followed the sound to the sunken living room, the surrounding walls made mostly of glass panes with with the odd support beam thrown in. It had unsettled her first, all that time ago, leaving her with a feeling of vulnerability that ordinary glass provided. She'd craved a fortress, a place locked down even tighter than the Normandy ever had been, but in time, the ability to gaze on out to the unobstructed view of relative isolation on a planet so green had turned into a comfort.

"Shouldn't you be getting ready for bed, Hannah?" She asked, leaning her shoulder against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest. Though her words were serious, her tone and the smile at the corner of her mouth said otherwise.

From the floor, her daughter tilted her head up to regard her mother, thin wisps of hair that had pulled loose of her braid framing her face. Her clothes were in similar disarray, t-shirt twisted haphazardly and stained with what lunch and dinner had been, the little girl temporarily lost in her own world where things like keeping clean and neat didn't matter. Her face was sheepish, caught in the act of disobeying what her mother sometimes referred to as her _direct orders_, but like the clothing and her hair, it didn't matter—not really. Of all the things her mother could raise her voice about, bedtime was never one of them.

"Daddy said…" The girl offered as an excuse, but like always, never got to the part of her sentence where she actually had a reason for the disobedience.

"Mmhmm," Shepard hummed in reply, desperately trying to hold back the smile on her lips. Give that kid an inch, and she'd take a mile, and damn if the three and a half year old didn't always know when she could get away with murder. Bare feet hit the plush carpeting of the area rug her child played on, and Shepard settled down beside her, pulling Hannah into her lap. The girl didn't protest, not even a whine as her small hands abandoned what she'd been using, but rather, was content to be in her mother's grasp. Shepard kissed the crown of her head and brushed the hair from her daughter's face.

"Baby kicking?" Hannah questioned, her voice a near sing-song as she glanced up to her mother, blue eyes wide and large. With no hesitation—something that could be attributed to not only being a child and not knowing social conventions, but also the fact that this was _her mother_, and never had she felt in her short life that either of her parents didn't absolutely, completely, belong to her—she prodded her mother's stomach with her fingers.

There was some redirection of the girl's hand against Shepard's growing, but still not overly large stomach, until she held Hannah's palm in place. Both patiently waited another moment more until the subtle motion of a weak kick or perhaps just a shift of the as-yet-to-be-born baby reminded mother and sibling of her presence.

"You used to do that all the time," a third voice said, this one belonging to Garrus, as he entered the living room at the opposite end.

Hannah raised a disbelieving glance to her father, but then simply shook her head. "No."

"No?" He said with something of a laugh as he sat down beside them. Opening his arms to her, Hannah didn't even stop to bid goodbye to her mother and her new rival before climbing onto her father's lap. "Where do you think you came from, then?"

She considered the thought, nuzzling her head against Garrus' chest from where she sat on his thigh, his arms a tight ring of safety around her. "I was always here," she decided.

"That so?" Shepard asked, hand rubbing at one of her daughter's cool, bare feet. "Because I distinctly remember you right about…" Her hand returned to herself, and she stroked over the fabric pulled tightly over her stomach. "…Here. Keeping me up at night."

Hannah's brows furrowed together, her forehead crinkling in disagreement. "I'm too big."

"You were smaller," Garrus offered as a suggestion, brushing his forehead against the top of his daughter's head, then turning in towards Shepard to give her the same brush of affection just above her ear.

"Your Dad never used to put you down when you were a baby, I used to get jealous. You know, there was a time when Daddy belonged to _me_," Shepard said with a smile, meeting Garrus' gaze. "And now I have to share him with you and your sister when she comes."

In a childish move of selfishness, Hannah's tiny hands gripped at her father's clothing wherever she could reach, like the prospect of losing him to her mother was actually a likely reality. She gave a feigned glare towards her mother, though it ended up with a giggle. "Mine."

"Yeah, yeah," her mother teased right back.

While Garrus dragged his talons lightly up and down the stretch of his daughter's back, a habit grown out of how much she liked the slight scratchy feeling of it, he turned his focus on Shepard. "Feeling okay?"

A shoulder shrugged as she leaned back, her hands on the carpeting behind her as an added line of support. "You know me," she said cheekily, "I've always had worse."

"Doesn't exactly comfort me, Shepard, since I've _seen_ you at your worst."

"Mommy," Hannah corrected as she pulled at the buttons on her father's clothes, playing with the pieces of molded plastic bound by thread. "_Not_ Shepard."

"You're right, you're right," he said in response, and smoothed a hand over her hair. For so long he'd never seen the appeal of humanity's version of the Turian's fringe. It was always growing and always _shedding_, required too much care and product—though that fit in well with humanity's other favorite hobby: buying crap they didn't need, and not to mention it was a complete and utter time sink. Based on logic alone, he'd been fond of those short and tight cuts most of the military men had, but Shepard had ended up changing his viewpoint on hair, like so many other things.

Now, it was hard for him to not stroke a finger through his wife's—and she was his wife at least in spirit, if not on paper—hair, grown out as it was down past her shoulders. When it came to his daughter's hair, which, though thinner, was a similar shade to her mother's… well, he had no self control when it came to constantly brushing it from her face. Perhaps even more incriminating was the fact that he'd somewhere along the way picked up just how to weave locks of hair together in a braid and similar fashions—not that it had been particularly _difficult_, not compared to calibrating Thanix cannons, at least—but it was the thought of it all. Hair. Of all things he could love, Garrus Vakarian loved hair.

"My back's killing me already, but that's par for the course, right?"

Another human metaphor, and though he still didn't really understand exactly what _it_ meant, he understood what _she_ meant by it. He reached a hand, one not occupied in still curling around their daughter, over to rub at the small of her back, and with an appreciative sigh, he felt her body relax into it. Shepard leaned in and kissed his shoulder as a silent thanks.

"Mama," Hannah said with a yawn as she wiped a palm at her face, a poor attempt at staving off sleep. "Will the baby look like Daddy?"

Shepard's lips pursed. "What do you mean?"

She sat up a little straighter, though not straying far from the veil of closeness provided by resting against her father. "I," she said, hands gesticulating towards herself, palms touching to her chest. That was a new habit of hers, talking with her hands. "…Look like Mommy. The baby will be Daddy." There was a child's logic to it.

Before Shepard could even say a word to him or venture a look of panic at the topic her daughter was broaching on her own, Garrus was shaking his head, scoffing. "This one's all you."

How they ever planned on telling their children—or child, as until the last year they'd never been definitely sure about having more than one—about how they came to be, Shepard always imagined it at a far later age. Her voice caught in her throat. She was beginning to realize she hadn't given a young mind enough credit, or maybe she just had never really wanted to think about having that type of conversation in the first place, upsetting the little applecart she and Garrus had struggled to pull together on their own.

She shifted positions, this time on her knees beside Garrus and her daughter, as it at least gave her the semblance of control. "You know how Daddy's a Turian? And your Grandpa and your cousin Necalli are Turians too?"

Whether she was fully comprehending or not, Hannah nodded, her head pillowed against her father's chest.

"Well, me—I'm a human, from Earth, where we live. Your Dad's not from here, though. He's from far away, where everyone else looks like him. We've talked about Palaven, you remember, right?" Shepard struggled with her words, a hint of frustration growing as she tried to break down the facts enough for a child to understand, without leading to some three year old existential meltdown of sorts.

"You know your kitten?" Garrus interrupted, taking pity on Shepard. "Well, pretend that when she grows up, she falls in love with a dog."

"Daddy," Hannah admonished, her head shaking, "Cats _hate_ dogs. I'd never let her play with one." There was a matter-of-factness to her.

"I know—but just pretend, alright?"

Catching where he was going with his analogy, Shepard picked up where he left off. "And one day they decide they want to have babies together. But, you've never seen a baby that's both cat and dog, have you? You've seen puppies and kittens, but not both."

The girl nodded, sucking on a few of her fingers out of an old habit of comfort stemming back to infancy.

"That's because they're too different. Deep in their DNA—you know the little tiny bits that make you _you_—it says they can only have babies with other cats or other dogs. And your Dad, you know how we always have to make him special breakfast or lunch or dinner? That's because in his DNA, he's very different from you and me."

Across her daughter's face, Shepard could read the call to sleep pulling at her. She wasn't sure if she'd remember any of this in the future, or actually understand any of it at all, but while she had the last lingering seconds of her daughter's attention, she'd finish what they started.

"But Daddy and I, we really wanted to have you, Hannah. So we went to a few doctors, and had them help us, and they put you," Shepard touched her stomach, the same space occupied by Hannah's sister, "right here, just like they put your sister. I can only have human babies, so that's what you are. Human."

Hannah tilted her head up to regard her father, taking in the features of his very different face. It was all she'd known her entire life, and just as she knew her mother's fleshy face and soft voice, she knew her father's plates and mandibles, the gravel-like tone he used when he tucked her into sleep.

"But your Daddy raised you, Hannah. And that's what matters, right? If I'm asleep or not home, who makes you breakfast in the morning?"

She didn't respond, just made a silent, suddenly shy glance up to her father.

Shepard nodded. "That's right, Daddy does. And when you were in my stomach, he used to spend hours talking to you so you'd know his voice. When you were born, he held you even before I did, baby. You know his Turian kisses?"

As if to demonstrate the point, Hannah pulled herself up as far as she could reach, her father's clothes and shoulders being used as leverage. She rubbed her forehead against his mandible, and Garrus returned the gesture, eyes shutting briefly as his forehead lingered against her scalp.

"You'd only been born for a minute when he gave you your first one." Tears wet her eyes at the memory of it, and before she'd realized it, Garrus held a palm to her cheek. "And he loves you, Hannah," she said, her eyes on the Turian she'd been attached to for a decade, though she spoke to her daughter. "Just as much as I love you. So no, your sister won't look like Daddy. She'll look like you and me. But—" Shepard lightly touched a finger to the girl's nose. "You've got his blue eyes, don't you?"

Hannah gave a contented sigh, happy with the answer even if most of it had gone in one ear and out the other. "Mommy," she whispered, eyes shutting sleepily as she relaxed against her father once again, "you talk too much."

All either of her parents could do in response, was laugh.

"Mm, and this is why you were supposed to have taken a bath and been in bed a half hour ago."

"Damn—" Garrus said with a regretful shake of his head. "I came in here to tell her the water was ready and completely forgot about it when I sat down." He stroked a hand over Hannah's back, trying to rouse her. "Gotta get up, Han."

"Dad's right," her mother said as she stood, stretching her tired muscles that only ached further from being twisted and uncomfortable on the floor. "Got a long day of travel ahead of us tomorrow."

"No," Hannah pleaded, extending the vowel as she whined, only burying her face further into her father's cowl as he, too, stood up and partially jostled her from position even as he kept a tight hold on her. "Just sleep."

Garrus glanced to Shepard for some kind of decision on the matter, and the ever so slight shrug of her shoulders gave him the answer. At the far end of the room, he stopped and turned before exiting completely. "I'll get her changed and in bed. Go take it easy."

He found her in the living room later, though judging by the mug of hot tea in her hands, she'd left and come back at some point. Laid up across the couch, her back to an arm of it, Garrus lifted her legs to sit with her, draping them back across his lap. He rubbed at a bare ankle, even if she hadn't quite reached the stage from her last pregnancy when they'd ended up swollen.

"That was some quick thinking," he said with a click of his mandibles, his kind's equivalent of a soft laugh.

"I'm useful for two things now, apparently. Planning suicide missions and explaining to toddlers why they don't have their father's good looks."

With a mock indignant tone, he canted his head towards her. "You used to dig these scars."

She raised a leg, dragged the upper surface of her foot against the opposite side of his face and along the particularly worn mandible. "Believe me," her foot dropped back to his lap, "I still do."

"Oh really?" And there was a hint of a husky tone to his already scratchy voice. He shifted, moving between her legs and leaning forward to take the cup out of her hands and set it on the floor beside the sofa. Kneeling between her thighs, he took the moment of silence and privacy for all it was worth, dragging his rough plated lips along her throat in a particularly human-like gesture.

Shepard let her warmed hands slip around to the back of his skull, feeling at the underside of his fringe as he gave a throaty, but quiet, moan in response to her gentle touch. Between her thighs, she felt the hard rocking of his plated pelvis pressing into her, her stomach not yet big enough to completely get in the way and complicate things entirely. "Don't start what you won't finish, Vakarian."

"Who said I won't? Hannah's asleep, we're all packed. Seems like I've got a few hours to kill," his words mumbled against her as he moved down, hands desperately pulling at her clothing to help her get free of them. She sat up a little better, letting him tug the fabric of her shirt off and then her bra—an item he'd mastered the removal of sometime ago—and immediately went in for her exposed breasts. He was gentle and careful with the increased size, rough tongue laving against a sensitive nipple as she arched her back in towards his touch.

"Garrus," she moaned, only too willing to let him do what he wanted.

Against him, he could feel the insistence of her hips, eager and jealous of the affections they were being denied. He relinquished his attention on her breast and headed lower, brushing his forehead against the skin to one side of her navel, his quiet acknowledgement of the unborn child still growing. Beyond the hump of her stomach, though, he worked at once again peeling back her clothing, taking shorts and briefs together.

Still fully clothed, but unwilling to wait any longer, Garrus glanced up towards Shepard as she lay across the piece of furniture—a piece that had particularly seen its fair share of action over the years—and for a moment let it sink in all the ways that things had changed. Time had passed too quickly, he thought, far too quickly. He'd blinked, or so it felt like, and years had gone by. He was a father, twice over now, and no longer did time get measured in battles won and lost, people dead and buried. It was the slight change of seasons, birthdays, and _firsts_. Firsts, not like trips through the Omega relay, but instead like his daughter's steps, Shepard giving birth, or the first time he'd held his daughter and really, truly, felt like a father.

Shepard nudged his cheek with the inside of her knee. "You okay?"

He nodded, and leaned forward, listening to her moan as he tasted her on his tongue.


	2. Chapter 2

_**The Normandy. Four Years Earlier.**_

"Mother of God!" Shepard moaned, her voice shattering in between heavy pants, lungs desperate for oxygen. Finger tips flexed and dug into the mixture of hide and plates of his chest, arms locking at the elbow as she used him for more than just physical support, but also some lifeline to the here and now. In the wake of her orgasm—the last vestiges of which were still coursing through her as each and every muscle in her body slowly began to relax—Shepard's jaw hung slack and open while her eyes were clenched tightly together, her eyebrows furrowed in the only kind of expression that came close to defining her release.

Ten seconds before and she'd been rising on her knees, working the muscles of her thighs until they burned with lactic acid as her pelvis pressed down into that of her lover's. She was frozen in time for the moment, however, body going still outwardly even as her inner muscles clenched and surrounded him, trying to force his body, too, to give in. She felt the warmth of his open palms sliding up the skin of her outer thighs as she first came back to herself.

"Still with me?" Garrus said, a rumble of a smug laugh in his throat.

A delayed, breathy moan was exhaled from deep in her chest. Shepard rolled her head back simultaneously with the flexing of the muscles in her shoulders, as if that orgasm had somehow changed her physiology completely in the most satisfying of ways. "Sorry," she said, and if her face wasn't already red from exertion and arousal, they would have pinked up at that moment. With great reluctance, she finally opened her eyes, immediately finding his below her.

"Don't think you have to be sorry for enjoying yourself." And there it was again, smug self-satisfaction.

Shepard nearly smacked it off his face, but instead opted to once again rock her hips against his, much more timid and slow than she had been prior to her orgasm. "You've no idea how this feels."

Though the feeling in his groin was begging him to close his eyes tight and give in to the oncoming release, Garrus kept them forcibly open, watching the woman above him. He slid a hand from her thigh up to her breast, wary and careful as he gently cupped the heavy weight.

"It's okay," she reassured him with a whisper, and let her hand join his, palming over his three-fingers. Her digits applied pressure, and only when she felt his own muscles flex and squeeze at her breast, did she let go. He had the idea. "It's not—" She moaned again, lacking the strength and willpower to restrain herself otherwise. "So bad." The pleasure, for the time being, outweighed the pain, the insatiable sensation between her thighs returning already.

The seconds passed, and with a guttural moan of her given name, Garrus grew closer to finding his own climax.

"No," she insisted, knowing each of the sounds he made by now. She pleaded. "Not yet."

"Spirits," and this time it was more of a groan, challenging his body to resist the pull to just let go. They'd been at it for awhile now and she was impossibly tight, and _wet_. Even if he wasn't in love with Shepard, a fact which was unquestioningly true, she'd ruined him for Turian females. Nothing compared to the slick easiness of sliding in and out of the woman above him, the ease at which their bodies fit together after years of life beside one another. "I can't—"

She moaned her words. "Just need—" But it was too late, and Shepard felt the familiar sensation of his orgasm running to completion, the movements of his hips up into hers ceasing all together. "God damn it, Garrus," she whined, and cut her body's thrusts off entirely as well. She'd been so close, could feel that climax approaching, but in seconds that build up was gone. It left her with an aching emptiness, body unsatisfied despite the number of times it had already hit its peak that night. Climbing off and immediately losing that pleasant fullness—that was even worse.

"Shit," he said, chest heaving as she laid down beside him. His body felt unusable, like some kind of, what was it humans loved so much? Jelly?

"You're telling me." She shook her head against the pillow it rested upon, looking across the few inches to where his was, watching her. "I feel… out of control. Like if I don't get off again…" There was no finishing the sentence, just a frustrated sigh from the back of her throat. "What happened to that Turian stamina?" She teased.

"You used that up ten minutes ago, but hey," he rolled onto his side, his body—rough and hard in contrast to hers—against the length of her own. Just as it had done before, his hand slid down to her thigh, this time not content to rest at the flesh there, but instead continuing on up to the junction of heat and slickness. There was no preamble to it, just the pad of his one of his fingers slipping between her already superheated flesh, stroking against the bundle of nerves that always left her trembling.

"You don't have to." Though the words were out, there wasn't much faith behind them. And as if he wouldn't have known that already, the unrestrained moan she let out immediately afterward did little to help her words' cause. She gripped her pillow, the rest of her body squirming against sheets and blankets. "Ah, right—yes—God, right there."

Garrus nuzzled into her shoulder and neck, only too happy to bring her relief where he'd previously failed her. "I don't mind." He glanced down to her body, the way her thighs were spread unabashedly open and her hips pressed slightly into his touch.

"Please," she called out quietly, and turned her head back towards his, one hand to his jaw to direct his mouth to hers. Her lips met his harder plates roughly, but she paid it no mind, even letting her teeth nip at his flesh there. And then, in seconds, Shepard was coming again, bucking into his hand, body shaking as she called his name.

He pulled back just far enough to be able to look—really look—at her face. Her eyes were sleepy and sated when she opened them. That smile she wore, it made everything worth it. "Better?"

Shepard nodded and rolled herself onto her side, facing him. She pulled herself in close, felt the swell of her stomach press into his flat abdomen. "Christ," she mumbled.

He laughed, relaxing as he tucked her head against his neck, beneath his chin. "I meant to ask you—but it didn't really seem like a good time—I don't really understand how a God can have a mother. Isn't he a God?"

"It's just an expression mostly," she said a little breathily, still regaining steady lung function. "But one of Earth's religions talks about how God impregnated some poor virgin with his son."

"You mean she didn't even get to—?"

Her head shook just barely against him. "Nope."

"That's… some fucked up God."

"Mm." Shepard's hand slipped around him, palming his backside. "You're telling me." Her lips touched to his throat, creating a line up to his mandible as she lifted her head to get access. "Remind me to thank your Spirits," she laid another kiss to his skin, "for giving me a Turian so fucking good with his hands."

"You can't possibly want more, _already_."

There was quiet laughter from her, and something like an exasperated sigh as she rolled over onto her back once again. "If this is how teenage boys feel, then thank God I wasn't one, I would've gotten half the galaxy pregnant." She paused, considered her words. "…You got any Vakarian bastards I should know about?"

Propping his head up on his arm, he was content to lay naked, eyes on her. "I think we're safe."

"That's right," she ran a tired hand along the curve of her stomach, "just the one."

"I _asked_ you if we should get married first," he contested.

"And entitle you to half my fortune?" She objected, smiling as humor laced her words. "I think not." Idly, she stroked a sweat sticky palm along the center of her stomach, from between her breasts down past its height at her navel, then back again. An endless, repeated loop as they enjoyed the mutual silence.

Garrus' eyes shifted, pupils following the motion.

"Sometimes, I can feel her," Shepard said as she watched his face for a reaction.

His gaze jumped back to her face. "Really?"

"It's almost nothing, a little flutter. It's strange, like it's familiar, but just a little different." Her hand went still, instead seeking out his, pulling his hand and talons to the bare skin of her stomach. "You're _allowed_ to touch her, you know that, right? Sometimes I can seem like that's the last thing I want, especially from other people. But you, you're her Dad. You get a free pass."

He swallowed hard, hesitant as his three fingers spread wide against the swell of her abdomen. "It's not that—"

"I know." Both her hands folded over the back of his, keeping his touch locked there as long as he'd physically allow it. "I know how eager you were when all of this started and things just… didn't work."

Beside her, Garrus tensed.

"And I didn't handle it well."

When his vision drifted from her stomach to her eyes, he found them watered.

"I didn't really know how, I still don't. I treated it like everything else that's happened, all the other people we've lost. Just boxed it up and told myself to move on, but I should've been able to talk about it to you, because I know it hurt you too." One hand slipped from his to cup at his cheek and mandible.

"I felt like I pushed you into doing this, again and again," he confessed, his voice a shadow of it's normal tone and volume. For a second, he shut his eyes, could recall every detail about the painful days that had passed. The way she'd tried to not let her emotions show, but how he could read the loss and disappointment just the same. How he hadn't a clue how to help, _if_ he even could. What business did he have trying to comfort her for something he couldn't really understand? Unlike most other things, it was their gender that isolated them in that regard, rather than their species.

"I know you're scared," she whispered, only because she knew how thin of a line she walked. A fraction of a decibel louder and there'd be tears spilling down her cheeks. "But she's with us this time, seventeen weeks. We lost the others at the start. Garrus—Garrus, look at me." He reluctantly opened his eyes to her. "I need you to enjoy this while we have it, okay? Don't spend the next couple of months waiting for something to go wrong. If we lived that way, you and I wouldn't have ever been together in the first place."

Garrus sighed, and hid his face away in her neck this time. He breathed in the smell of her, the soap and shampoo, sweat and sex. She was right, of course, just like she always was. "I'm sorry."

"No," she kissed against the side of his head, anywhere she could reach. "There's nothing to be sorry about. And I _know_ I say that sometimes when I'm actually pissed, but I really mean it this time. I just don't want you to wake up and realize you missed out on everything you were excited about."

There was hesitation, but he gave in. "All ri—"

"Commander," interrupted EDI, "Admiral Hackett is on vid-comm. The message is marked high priority."

"Fucking—" She censored herself, at least partially, and sat up. "Don't go anywhere," came the order as she gathered nearby pieces of abandoned clothing before finally heading towards the bathroom, "or you're sleeping in the wet spot."

Down a deck level and wearing barely the full components of her uniform—some of which had been upgraded a size or two not only to accommodate, but to conceal her stomach—Shepard connected to Hackett's open and waiting line.

"Commander Shepard," he said with a tip of his head through the hologram.

Far less formal than in years earlier, Shepard yawned, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "Admiral, what can I do for you? We're not due—"

"No, Shepard, it's not about that. I know the Normandy hasn't truly been an active ship in some time, but we received a distress signal from a vessel nearby to your location. We have a cruiser en route, but it'll be an hour or two before they make it out there. I was hoping you and some of your crew could take point on this in the interim."

Shepard's tongue ran over her upper lip in contemplation. There was a tone to Hackett's voice, one of urgency and that she hadn't heard for years now. Not since… not since before the Reapers had finally met their end. Now, more so than any time before, Shepard didn't want to get involved. "I don't see what the priority is, Sir. We're operating with a skeleton crew as it is, half our equipment has been repurposed for other ships in the fleet—we flat out don't even have the personnel or equipment to offer aid of _any_ kind."

Hackett's face was tense, and if it was any other officer in the fleet, she knew he would have been halfway to issuing a court-martial for insubordination, failure to follow orders, and some other trumped up charge to make sure the point was gotten across. Shepard, though, she knew she had leeway.

"I'm just saying, Admiral, unless it's truly an emergency, I'm not sure there's any benefit to us going out there." And with that, she stood her ground.

"Commander," his voice was tight, and if his posture was any indication, his body was wound just as much. "The last transmission read that their life support was functioning at seven percent. That was _four_ hours ago. If we wait any longer, the crew's likely to be dead."

Though he didn't say it, Shepard knew what would have been coming next. _And if you don't do something about it, their deaths will be on your hands._ That was what had always motivated her in the past, hadn't it? Saren, the Collectors, the Reapers. Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions will die if you don't do something about it, Shepard. No one else is going to do it, no one else will be able to.

She took a deep breath, head hanging. "I'll get on it."

"Good to hear, Commander. Keep us informed. Hackett out."

The vid-comm connection went dead.

"EDI? Wake everyone up."

"I don't like this," Garrus said to her from the back cabin of Normandy's shuttle. It wasn't as nice as the Kodiak, but the remnants of that ship were somewhere buried in London even all these years later. "You should've told Hackett."

Shepard fidgeted with the chest plate of her hard suit. Adjusted for the maximum size that particular model would allow, it still barely fit. "What did you want me to say? By the way, I'm pregnant, please don't put me on leave and take away my ship?" An aggravated huff of air left her lips as she struggled with the seals. "Get that for me?"

He reluctantly obliged, and though it took some work, the seal's final clasp came to a close.

"Christ," she said, taking a few deep lungfuls of air. "Another day and there'd be no getting me into this." Judging by Garrus' expression, it was the wrong thing to say. She pulled on her helmet, if only to temporarily avert her eyes from the sour expression he wore. "In and out, okay? Get the crew on the shuttle, wait until the Alliance ship arrives, then we'll let them deal with this bullshit." She touched a gloved hand to his armored cowl.

"_You_ don't need to go." Though he'd pulled his helmet on and she wouldn't easily have been able to see his eyes, his voice said enough.

Underneath, anxiety welled in her stomach. It had started off as a tiny ball of dread when she'd heard Hackett was on the line, coiling up and spreading in the conversation. And when she'd made it back to her quarters to gather the hard suit so rarely put to use in the last few months, and had to face Garrus who had—for once—patiently waited for her just as she'd asked… well, that anxiety no longer just pooled in her stomach, but instead spread to her extremities. She had a nervous twitch to her leg even now, pressing the glass of her helmet against his. "Don't worry."

The ship in question, smaller than Shepard had expected, didn't respond to any hails. Probably, she told herself, done in an attempt to reroute what emergency power remained to life support functions. They'd save their enviro suits for last, and with any luck, there'd still be enough oxygen left for them to be breathing by time Shepard and her small squad made up of herself, Garrus, and one lonely marine, made it inside.

As a factor of its limited size, the ship had no true proper place for a shuttle to land, which meant they were doing this a little less comfortably than normal. The shuttle's pilot, a woman with far less experience than Cortez or even Vega—who, inexplicably, was actually a worse driver than Shepard—held the small ship alongside the larger one's outer airlock, the hulls of each ship brushing together silently in the vacuum of space. Shepard made a mental note to make her pilot buff out those dings by hand when they got back.

Shepard, with a steadying hold from Garrus, reached across the small gap of space, drawing her omnitool up to the locked doors. "EDI? Give it a go," she said into her comm, and watched as the ship's AI manually overrode the lock through her omni-tool. The doors popped open in release, and wuth the help of grav-boots, Shepard stepped inside, helping the other two across. They sealed the outer doors behind them and repeated the process on the inner pair of doors, only to be greeted by the depthless blackness of the ship's interior. Shepard held up her gun, nice and steady thanks to muscle memory—even if she had to think that many of these specific muscles had long since been replaced or strengthened through cybernetics after her last foray with near death experiences. The flashlight on her omni-tool lit up the space ahead of them.

"No oxygen," Garrus said with a glance down to the readings on his omni-tool. "Not enough, at least."

"Probably rerouted the venting," she offered as a hypothesis. It was what she would have done.

They worked further into the ship, through a small mess where trays of half eaten food hung in the air. Shepard swatted at a clump of the familiar dehydrated mashed potato paste from Alliance rations, brushing it out of her way.

"Commander," said EDI, "based on the blueprints of this model of ship, I'm receiving life signs coming from Life Support. If my readings are correct, only three crew remain."

Shepard cursed and picked up her pace, navigating the unfamiliar pathways according to EDI's verbal directions. While all had seemed calm—eerily so with how things had been abandoned—on the ship's main floor, Shepard went into the lower compartments expecting a different experience altogether. She was methodical in her approach, repeating the movements of her light from floor on up to the ceiling, searching for some clue or indication of what had happened.

Since the end of the war, her life had been a mixture of things. Time spent healing, recovering. Months of being paraded around to colonies and home worlds by the Alliance, her face an unwilling symbol for the human race and just how much it could achieve—despite how much Shepard consistently argued that it was the fact that they'd _all_ come together that had saved the galaxy. Nowhere in that time, though, had Shepard blindly crawled into a dark and lifeless ship's belly without any true understanding of what had happened. That had been the woman before, the woman that ran straight for that beam down in London, not knowing what to expect but hoping for anything but the sizzling burn of her flesh. This Shepard, the one that had survived all of it but just _barely_... she'd left that life behind.

Walking through the ship, she was terrified of what she'd find. Blood. Bodies rotting and stacked high like she'd seen inside the Citadel—of all the things she couldn't remember about what had happened up there, she hated that she could recall _that_. She could still smell it, even nearly taste the metallic sense of blood on her tongue if she thought about it hard enough.

But there wasn't any of that. No blood, bodies, or chunks of someone that used to be floating through her field of vision. Just the dark corridor, a few cases of equipment levitating off the floor with the lack of artificial gravity. Serene calmness.

Shepard banged her hand on the door to Life Support, fist rapping in dots and dashes of the ancient, but still used, morse code. H-E-L-P, she tapped. A-L-L-I-A-N-C-E. On the other side, someone beat back an unintelligible response, and Shepard was able to connect to their comm link while in close proximity.

"Commander Shepard, Alliance. You boys got emergency suits on?"

While she was all formality, the person on the other line wasn't. "Y-yes," the unknown on the other side responded, and there was the distinct sound of teeth chattering. Not a good sign.

"I'm overriding the lock. And if anyone in there has any weapons, I strongly advise you to clear out your thermal clips and take your hands off of them. I see anyone even _looking_ suspicious, my team and I shoot first, don't even bother with asking questions later. Got it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Shepard raised her omni-tool, virtual wheels and gears spinning on the door panel until it finally opened up. From her left and right side, Garrus and the marine raised their flashlights and weapons immediately, illuminating the small room as best they could. EDI had been right, there were three people left breathing. Though, obviously, her sensors hadn't accounted for the people that _had been_ and no longer were. Beyond the three remaining passengers, Shepard could just barely make out the human forms of those that hadn't been so lucky.

"Used up their oxygen too fast," one of the survivors ventured, catching the tilt of Shepard's helmet as she gazed past them. "They were trying to repair—"

"When you don't have minutes left on your breathable air, you can tell someone all about it. Right now, I don't much care to be on here any longer." She nudged her pistol down the direction of the hall before holstering it away. "My marine here, Vasquez, will lead the way out."

Shepard waited with Garrus, picking up the rear. They made it back upstairs and into the airlock before another word was mentioned from any of the Normandy's new wards.

"We can't—" the man spun, eyes wide on the Commander as she closed the inner airlock doors behind them, and reopened the outer ones on the other side. The shuttle was a few feet off, door open and waiting. "—Can't _leave_ their bodies here!"

"Johan," a woman pleaded, "come get in the shuttle."

It was panic, if Shepard ever did hear it, and as her marine helped the other two across, she clasped a hand to 'Johan's' shoulder, her voice a soothing calm. "Alliance will be coming to take care of them and your ship. Right now, though, my job is to get you breathing clean air while you've still got a chance. So how about you keep moving, soldier."

"_You're_ Alliance. Why aren't you helping them!" And just as they were about to cross the gap, grav-boots disengaged, he whirled on her unsuspecting form, shoving hard against her. Lacking gravity and any restraint, it had a dual effect: 1) propelling him into the open waiting doorway of the shuttle where he collided with those already inside, and 2) forcing Shepard backwards. Based on her prior positioning, she didn't just coast back into the open airlock where Garrus remained, but directly into the corner where airlock met outer hull. Her suit and back cracked against the metal edge, an impact that wasn't particularly harsh compared to the things she'd endured, but was jarring nonetheless.

She felt the wind knock out of her at the hit in her already far-too-tight suit, gulping for breath, and for a second she thought she heard the faint hiss of a severed O2 line. One moment she was beside Garrus and that fucking soldier that had snapped after sitting waiting to die for the last few hours, and the next she could see the Normandy SR-1 exploding around her, emergency pods jettisoned away as she was left struggling, knowing full well of the suffocation she'd succumb to in the next minute.

Twisting in her suit, Shepard gasped for air she was certain wasn't there, arm stretched up and backward to reach for the back of her helmet, desperate to plug that hole up. Her heart pounded and she screamed in the weightlessness, not feeling the grasp of a familiar arm around her waist, nor the impact with the shuttle's floor as the artificial gravity kicked in upon sealing of the door behind them.

Shepard woke, hours later, in Normandy's Medical Bay.

"Commander," Chakwas said with her regular gentle bedside manner, even if there was an undertone of something else lingering beneath her words.

Struggling to push herself into a sitting position, the doctor stepped forward, adjusting the height of the bed as well as helping Shepard inch herself up. She grimaced. "What the fuck happened?"

Chakwas leveled a gaze at her. "What do you remember?"

"Let's not play that game," Shepard said with a groan. "Just give me the sit-rep."

"From what I've heard," the doctor said, picking up the data pad beside the bed to focus her attention on, "you had something of a panic attack out there after that soldier pushed you."

Shepard's face went ashen. "How did I even—how'd I get back on the shuttle?"

"How do you think?" Chakwas said with a telling smile at the corner of her mouth.

Of course. Shepard eased back into the uncomfortable padding of the bed. Garrus. Ever dependable, ever loyal, Garrus. "Where is he?"

"That Alliance ship arrived while you were out, so I would assume he's writing a lengthy report about his suggestions for what to do with that soldier who landed you in here."

"Just a kid," she said with a sigh, attempting to ignore the headache beginning to grow with increasing pressure beneath her eyes. "Am I all right?" A sudden hand went to her stomach in a flash of unease, as if expecting to find the slight fullness absent. "She's okay?"

Chakwas gave a mirthful laugh. "Commander, you didn't hit yourself _that_ hard, from what I heard. But as far as your adventuring days are concerned, you'd be best off considering them over." She grew serious. "I'm sorry if that's not something you want to hear."

"No," Shepard replied, "maybe I needed a wake up call. You're sure though, positive she's all right?"

Chakwas set her hand against one of Shepard's fidgeting wrists. "She's fine."

With a deep swallow, she shut her eyes for a moment, blocking out the inner terror and worry that replaced the anxiety from earlier in the day. Behind her eyelids, all she could see was the burning carcass of the SR-1, even the cold dead eyes of some of her crew that hadn't made it out so safely. Another touch to her arm brought her back, and this time it wasn't Chakwas, it was Garrus. She immediately leaned in to him.

"Had me worried," he said, the strain in his voice betraying how sturdy he felt otherwise. Bending forward, he nuzzled the top of her head with his mandible. "How long do I have to wait before you tell me what really happened out there?"

"Forever," she said jokingly, letting go of him to venture a glance towards where Chakwas was sitting at her desk. Her attention returned to him. "I don't know—I just… I thought I was back on the Normandy." There was confusion on his face, so she restated what she meant. "The _old_ one. The one that's in pieces on Alchera." He took a seat in the chair at her bedside. Taking a deep breath, she met his eyes. "Do you know how I died?"

He was stricken by her words. It wasn't a period of time he ever wanted to look back on, not since she'd come running across that bridge on Omega. "They said you didn't make it to one of the escape pods. Got caught in an explosion, I think."

Her head shook as he gave the excuse that was written across every formal report in the galaxy. Of course that's what they thought, it was the last anyone had seen of her. "No, well, there was an explosion, a few of them, but it wasn't what killed me. I tore a hole in my O2 line, couldn't reach it to try to stop it. Last thing I remember was getting pushed away from the Normandy and feeling _weightless_ and struggling to breathe. Then…" Shoulders shrugged as she laid back against the the partially upright bed. "Cerberus."

The Turian didn't have any words of comfort for her this time, and beyond his pupils, Shepard could very nearly see him trying to imagine the scene before him in parallel to what had happened earlier. The trigger that set her off.

"I don't know, when I hit the ship today, I just thought I was back there. I couldn't breathe no matter how hard I tried."

His hand found hers on the bed and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

"Garrus?"

"Yeah?"

"It was too close out there," her voice was quiet, "way too close. I'm fucking done with all of this," she admitted, frustration evident. "The Alliance, being a neutered Spectre, running all over the Galaxy looking for trouble I don't even want anymore. I've just had enough."

"Shepard," his mandibles spread wide and relaxed again, "I'm only here because of you. You could tell me you wanted to move to Tuchanka and raise forty Krogan and I'd go." He squinted slightly, a far off look in his eye as he smiled. "Well… maybe not."

His reassurance was what she needed. Shepard put in for an indefinite leave of absence the next morning. She and the Normandy finally said goodbye once and for all.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Present.**_

While Eden Prime had once been a beacon of humanity's presence in the galaxy—their proof that they could, in fact, settle beyond their own system and do it successfully—like everything else, it had greatly changed in the time that followed the Reaper War. With species pulling back and away from some of their colonies and settlements to rebuild and repopulate their planets of origin, very few settled planets were thriving as they once had. Eden Prime was the exception.

The Citadel destroyed, or at least enough parts of it blown to bits and damaged enough to make the structure beyond any kind of repair, and a new center of focus for Citadel space needed to be established. Plans were talked of for rebuilding the Citadel, new and better than before, but even without the questions of logistics—how can we rebuild something we knew so little about? Where will we get the technology from to build such an enormous structure in the terribly inaccessible part of space known as the Serpent nebula? Who will finance it? Who will build it? How long would it take to build it?—there was also the reminder that perhaps reconstructing something that had been the tomb to so many, and was built by the very creatures that had killed hundreds of millions, if not billions, was a terrible, horrible, disgusting idea.

And with that, what remained of the Council had looked for a new place to build their literal and proverbial base on. In the end, that place had been chosen to be Eden Prime. It was a paradise still, even with so much of its beauty burned, and a planet that had in the recent years become much more of a safe haven to all races rather than just humanity.

The thing Shepard hated most about space travel lately was the fact that no matter how she got from point A to point B, she wasn't in command of the vessel. A trip to Eden Prime while she was in command of the Normandy would have taken a few hours at most. And that was if they had to make a few FTL jumps along the way between clusters to get to a Mass Relay. If she was feeling particularly impatient, Joker was always glad to push the Normandy to her limits to get her there half a minute faster, not to mention that unshackled AI who always knew of some little known shortcut or a more precise calculation that shaved off time and fuel expenses.

Traveling through the galaxy as a civilian, even if Shepard managed to catch a ride on an Alliance vessel, was something close to hell. Together, she and Garrus made for just about the worst pair of backseat drivers the universe had ever seen. Though navigation had never been either of theirs strong suits, Shepard was certain she always knew better than who was currently at the helm. It left her with an itch to head down to the ship du jour's engineering—_always, always_ expecting to find Tali there—and start crawling into the network of wires and hardware, determined to try her hand at bringing the ship up a fraction of a percent in overall functioning. Calibrations, she'd said, whenever Garrus asked her where she'd disappeared to, and despite the feigned glare he always gave her, he never stopped inquiring. It had become habit.

It was different now, though, with a child in tow. It gave Shepard something to distract herself with, her attention torn from the ship and its crew and instead laid firmly on keeping the pre-schooler out of trouble. She was a terror, that one, and as Shepard took a glance around the small cabin that was theirs for the half a day they'd been in transport, she wondered exactly how a three and a half year old child could make such a mess. Perhaps it was just an inheritable trait to create so much chaos wherever she went, a trait Hannah would have definitely gotten from her mother.

"Do you remember this from last year?" Garrus asked from the lounge seated beside the small, but thick, window that cut through the hull of the ship. Hannah stood on the cushion in the space beside him, leaning up against the back of the couch as she peered out the window.

"Uh-uh," Hannah said with an exaggerated shake of her head, hair swaying with her, tousled as it already was. She raised a hand and poked a finger into the glass, pointing at the sphere hanging in the distance and getting larger as they finally closed in. "What's that?"

"Eden Prime, that's where we're going."

Shepard paced the length of the cabin, picking up her daughter's belongings as she went. She didn't even remember packing this many belongings for their whole trip, and yet somehow there they were, scattered far and wide. Not to mention—she scooped up the growing kitten into her arms, stroking over the white fur of its head—the damn cat they'd had to bring along at her daughter's insistence. "You remember," she told, more than asked, her daughter, "you saw your cousin here last year. And Liara, she brought you that blanket."

"Oh," Hannah drawled, playfully smacking her open palms against the glass as more of the planet's greenery came into view the closer they got. "Necalli there now?"

"Mmhmm," her mother said, opening the small cat carrier door to place the kitten inside in preparation for disembarkment. "They came all the way from Palaven to see you."

Whatever it was, whether it was the incessant meows or the squeak of the hinge of the metal gated door, Hannah turned sharply, eyes on her mother as the previous discussion was forgotten. "You _said_ she could stay out!" She accused, scrambling quickly from the sofa and darting across the small, enclosed space. Tiny hands pulled at the lock, not able to yet master opening it in her haste. Instead, she settled for sticking her little fingers through the holes between the metal, wiggling them at the kitten who pawed playfully at her miniature human owner.

"_Until_ we got here, Hannah. And any minute now they'll—"

The ship's captain cut through the general comm system—an interruption of authority Shepard was grateful for since it usually meant her daughter would listen—announcing their immediate arrival to follow.

"We should've waited on the cat until after this trip." Shepard glanced towards Garrus.

"If you'd seen her face, you wouldn't have been able to say no."

Well, that probably was true, as there wasn't much in the galaxy that Hannah Shepard-Vakarian wanted for even at such a young age. But for the sake of the argument and the preference she had to sitting, high and mighty, on her throne of better decisions, she chose not to let that detail come out. "Just remember when it gets out of the hotel and we've got a crying and screaming toddler on our hands, it's your fault."

"Got it," he replied curtly, but stood in the next breath, absentmindedly beginning to repeat the work Shepard had already done at picking up after the tornado-like child. With most of the mess handled, albeit without organization since most of the stray bits of clothing and belongings had simply ended up shoved into whatever crevice of space they could fit into within their carry-ons, he touched a hand to her shoulder. "Relax."

Shepard sighed in response, taking a deceptively long blink of her eyes as she felt sleep calling to her even as she was standing. "I will, as soon as we settle in."

It was hours after their arrival when they caught up with Garrus' sister, just early enough to catch a meal before the local star set down below the edge of the planet. Though much hadn't changed on the surface since Shepard's first touchdown on the planet over a decade before, like the color of the Eden Prime-originating plants or even the smell of the air, she tried not to see images of the past behind every corner. This wasn't where Jenkins had died or where she'd met Ashley, another person dead under her watch, it was just a beautiful planet, alive and learning to thrive again.

"My brother going to make you keep going until you get a boy?" Solana asked from beside Shepard at the table they shared.

Shepard was quick to laugh, an outright dismissal of an idea if there ever was one. "No, he's most definitely cut off." She glanced towards where Garrus sat in the next seat over, the way his eyes were on his daughter and nephew as they played nearby on the grass just beyond the veranda. A look like that, that longing fondness, that was what got her pregnant a second time. And if she wasn't careful, he'd be giving that look towards their second child after her birth and Shepard would be caving, committing to another year of in-vitro and pregnancy. "I'm getting older anyway," she used as a logical excuse, "probably too risky in a few more years."

Garrus rested his arm atop the armrest of his chair, palm opened up. In return, Shepard set her hand in his, let their uneven numbers of fingers link together. "What she means is, compared to raising a kid, commanding a bunch of criminals was downright easy."

"Ha-ha." Shepard shook her head, but smiled all the while. There was some truth to it. While she may have cared for her crew, she'd known they could take care of themselves in nearly every situation. Sure, they fought with one another and got into their own manner of trouble, but if Zaeed shot himself in the gut by accident she'd throw some medi-gel on the wound, send him off to Chakwas, and hope he made it out okay. Children, though, in particular her child… Shepard was used to following Hannah around their home, protecting her from bumps and bruises and other things three year olds had absolutely no sense about. It was exhausting. Her head tilted a little back towards Garrus. "Do you want a son?"

"Please," Solana answered before her brother got a chance to, "if my brother's biggest complaint about life is being surrounded by Shepard women, he's had it pretty good."

"We are particularly hard to get rid of," said Shepard, releasing her hold on his hand to nudge her knuckles against his mandible and jaw, teasingly. "The second someone says they've got a Turian we're allowed to adopt, though," there was a wistfulness to her voice, "we'll be on it."

Garrus's eyes met hers and there was an almost imperceptible flicker of something, a millisecond of the widening of them, but Shepard knew him well enough for it to not have gone unnoticed.

"Sorry your mate couldn't make it," Shepard offered, changing the subject.

"Me too, he was looking forward to seeing everyone, but the plans changed at the last minute." Solana eased back into her chair, craning her neck to keep an eye on their children, not that Shepard's and Garrus' eyes weren't already on them constantly. Hovering, without being too directly close. "I brought a replacement, though," and this time she set her attention on her brother.

His brow plates shifted. "Who?"

"Oh you know, the Primarch."

"Why would you—" It was easy, sometimes, with how detached he and Shepard were from intergalactic politics lately, to fall back into thoughts of time long since passed. Primarch Fedorian was always his first thought, and then Victus, as short a term as he had served until stepping in as Councilor after the war. To recall that Palaven's current Primarch was, of all people, his father, was particularly hard to remember out of the gates. "He came all the way here? Council politics, probably." He tried to shrug it off.

"He's doing some business, if that's what you're implying, but only because it would've been rude to come and _not_ check in with the Council in some way." Solana leaned in, pointed and sharp elbows on the table. "He came for you, Garrus."

Though many of the lingering problems had been resolved—or at least pushed aside and buried—during the time after Palaven and Menae were burning, the recent years and his father's promotion hadn't lent for much time to be spent healing old wounds.

Shepard touched her hand to her lover's thigh, a symbol of solidarity and a reminder to not let his angrier emotions take hold of him in the end. "It's good he came," she said for the both of them, "Hannah should meet her grandfather."

Garrus nodded solemnly. "Should've met her years ago."

She felt much of the same, but it wasn't her place to further create a wedge between father and son. That had been a decision she'd come to before their daughter was born, and one she wouldn't start promoting now.

Beyond them, there was the distinct sound of a child's yell, though by the sound of the voice, Shepard knew it didn't belong to her own flesh and blood. Which was probably worse, because that meant her daughter was the cause of it. "Excuse me," she said quickly, pushing herself up and heading towards the pair of children, determined to defuse the situation on her own even if she heard Solana and Garrus rising to their feet as well. "Hannah," and before she even said anything else, she knew her daughter to be guilty, the look on her face was enough. "What'd you do?"

"She tried—she tried," the little Turian boy huffed, near tears, "to pull one of my _plates_ off!" He touched his talons to the offended brow plate, which of course was still firmly in place and looking no worse for the wear.

Shepard had never heard of something like that ever happening, even in battle, but anything was possible, she supposed. She just doubted her daughter would have the strength to do it. It probably hurt, though, and to a boy not yet at his sixth birthday, it would've been too much for him to reasonably handle without complaint. Somewhere over her shoulder, she heard Garrus laughing, and Shepard threw him a sharp look. He silenced himself as best he could.

"Sorry, Nec," Garrus said, "I'm not sure what her fascination is with doing that, but believe me, she tries it once a week on me."

Hannah, already keenly aware of her father finding humor in the situation, let out her own proud giggle. Her hands moved to her mouth and chubby, dimpled cheeks, doing a poor job at stifling what she knew would only make her mother angrier.

"We've talked about this." Shepard kneeled in front of her daughter as best she could, given her size and offset center of balance. "You wouldn't like it if your cousin pinched you or pulled your hair, would you?" For a second, she was certain her daughter would defy her and shout out a jubilant 'Yes!' Hannah knew better, though, and instead shook her head. "Are you going to do it again?" A second time, she denied it. "Now say you're sorry or he's not going to play with you anymore. You have to be nice, Hannah."

The girl did as she was told, offering her somewhat flippant apology to her cousin, and then went in for the kill, leaving a sloppy kiss somewhere in the general vicinity of where she'd hastily hurt him a minute earlier. Necalli grimaced at the human sign of affection.

Garrus looked to his sister. "Sorry."

She waved him and his apology off. "Necalli had a biting phase. That was much worse than anything Hannah could ever do."

Shepard took Garrus' offered hands, needing the stability and strength to get up without too much of a struggle. She dusted off her knees, only looking up when hearing his voice.

"It never gets old, hearing you tell Hannah to play nice when I distinctly remember you punching a few reporters a couple years back..."

"Those are the stories she doesn't ever get to hear about."

"There are _vids_ of it, Shepard. One day when she's older she'll get on a terminal and search for information about her mother and," he gave a self-satisfied sigh, "she is so going to use it against you."

"Yeah, well, Mr. Reach-and-Flexibility, until that day, our exploits stay _ours_."

"Reach and…?" Solana asked with amusement in her words.

"No," Garrus raised his hand to cut off her verbal assault. "There are just some things sisters shouldn't know about."

It was Shepard who insisted they head to the Council's new base of operations the next morning, despite Garrus' reluctance. Whether it was a Turian thing or just a son-and-father-who-never-truly-got-along thing, didn't truly matter. What Shepard knew was that if left up to the two males, both parties would end up departing Eden Prime without catching sight of one another. If Primarch Vakarian had every intention of contacting them further into their stay, then she'd just consider herself beating him to the punchline of that specific joke.

It wasn't the elder Vakarian she saw first, however, but Victus. He looked tired these days, more so than he had on Menae, but nowhere near the image she recalled of him after news of his son's honorable sacrifice. He may not have tried to let it show, and perhaps to most he had done a passable job at it, but Shepard was good at reading people, even if they didn't share the same evolutionary line.

"Commander," he greeted with a tip of his head, "You're a face I never expected to see here."

Shepard smiled, but didn't bother to correct the rank he greeted her with. To some people, she knew, she would always be the Commander no matter how much she distanced herself from that life. "Good to see you, Councilor," and it genuinely was. It couldn't, in her opinion, have gone to a better person, although not everyone tended to agree with her outlook on matters. Victus was strong and resourceful, but not too stubborn to refuse to see the other side of the coin. He knew what had to be done, what risks needed to be made, and what sacrifices couldn't.

"I'd like to say you're here to see me," he remarked, "but you had another Turian in mind, didn't you?"

The life before, when he'd been stuck as a guest on her ship and they'd been proud allies, it seemed like a dream to her when held in contrast to the life she'd more recently lived. In many ways, it all felt like it hadn't ever happened. A joke, a nightmare, memories that weren't really hers. "Have you seen the Primarch?"

His head gently dipped back towards the room from whence he came. "He'll be out in a few minutes. But now that you're here, I've actually been meaning to get in contact with you back on Earth."

Shepard recognized that tone. It was the same one he'd had when he'd asked her to somehow bring the Krogan into the fight, the same one everyone used when they needed something of a favor.

"I'm not sure I'm much help these days, Councilor." With that, she gave a hesitant touch to her stomach, a line drawn in the sand for him not to cross.

"You more than anyone knows what kind of work we have cut out for us with reestablishing the Council's presence. I've never been a diplomat, Shepard, you know that. I wouldn't be standing here right now if it hadn't been for you." He stepped away, leading her a few feet off towards the nearby floor to ceiling windows that overlooked a well maintained courtyard of flowers and shrubbery. "But I know how powerful of a negotiator you can be, and I'm not foolish enough to think the Council can put itself back together exactly like it was before. We need someone like you to be an advisor, to see the big picture for everyone and not their own myopic points of view."

Shepard followed where he led, the two of them standing out of the way and to the side of any kind of foot traffic, however little there was. What he was asking of her, she'd never, in all her craziest and most off the wall thoughts, believed would be uttered aloud. Her history with the council was… well, at best, it was downright masochistic on all fronts. But it was true, things had changed, as had the faces of those who were leading their respective races.

Through the window, Shepard could see Garrus and Hannah stopped together near a particularly bright display of flowers, no doubt planted there purposely rather than allowed to grow and pollinate where it pleased. Their daughter was set on the sharp cut of his hip, legs around her father's waist as he held her, leaned her in close to touch and smell the waxy petals. She had no idea what they were talking about, couldn't even really read the movements of their lips at such a distance, but their bodies were animated enough to tell her something was happening. They were smiling, above all else.

"Things have changed for me the last few years. I haven't been who I was since what happened on the Citadel." Though she didn't look to Victus, she continued speaking, a grin to her face. "I know I could help, or try to, at least… but there's other people who need me now, too."

"I understand," he sighed, "but at least consider it. Take the time you need to think it over with Vakarian. We could, perhaps, arrange for you to stay on Earth most of the time, if that would sway you."

Shepard blinked rapidly, finally taking her eyes off her family through the window. She turned back towards Victus. "I'll let you know."

"Good, and I believe," his hand raised, a gentle gesture towards the opening doors to the side of them, "there's the one you're looking for."

Primarch Vakarian and Shepard exchanged glances, and he visibly took a deep breath, steeling himself as he redirected his trajectory and made the approach to her. Victus excused himself.

"Shepard."

"Primarch."

The plates on his face, only slightly different than his son's, though fixed with the same blue clan markings, moved in a weary, but stern expression. "You don't have to call me that."

"You called me Shepard."

"Point taken, but even Garrus calls you that most of the time."

She let the thought go, and made a deliberate glance out the window, Garrus and Hannah still captured in full view down below. When she looked back, the Primarch was watching his son as well. "You should talk to him." It was an order, not a suggestion, much like the one she'd made to Liara about her father.

"I will," he said, a bit resentful of her intrusion, although as the mother of his technical grandchild, she did rightfully earn the position. "I _was_ going to," he tried to excuse himself, "after my work here was done."

For everyone's sake, she wouldn't call him out on what she believed to be a lie.

"Congratulations," he said after a moment of extended silence, and waved a three-fingered hand towards her stomach, but made no move to close in. "He didn't mention it, but I suppose I've earned that from him."

"Listen," she leveled, cutting out the formalities and bullshit. "I know you're busy. Garrus knows you're busy. We understand that there isn't a lot of time in your life for other things, and though he'll never admit it to you and would kill me for saying it, Garrus was hurt when you didn't come to see Hannah after she was born."

He didn't look at her, it was easier that way, and instead chose to focus on the distant image of his son, and the role he was playing as father.

"I hoped you would, but I didn't expect it. Him… I think he really thought you would come all the way to meet his daughter. And she _is_, you know, even if you don't see it that way."

"Shepard, I know she is. Turians aren't strangers to the ideas of raising someone else's children. There's honor in taking in your deceased brother's family and raising them like your own. I was just busy." A beat. "And a foolish man for taking things for granted again, and not realizing that I needed to make time for my family, even with the weight of everything else." He finally turned back to regard her head on. "When is the next one due?"

The question caught her off guard, already formulating her rebuttals and complaints ahead of herself. "Two months from now. Two Earth months. It's a girl," she added.

"I'll be there this time."

Though he didn't say it, she could tell it was a promise. And so help her, God, she'd make him regret it if he reneged on them one more time. "Do you want to meet Hannah?"

"I do."

Down in the garden, Shepard saw Garrus tense, like a young soldier standing to attention around their drill sergeant, as she and his father met them out under the sunlight.

"Daddy," Hannah whined as she was pulled away from the newest set of flowers she had been busily grabbing at and smelling so closely that a few flecks of pollen dusted her nose. She lifted her head to the presence of others, face illuminating at the sight of her mother, but immediately growing overshadowed. Suddenly shy in the presence of the relative stranger, she tucked her face in to her father's neck, peeking on back to the unknown Turian every few seconds.

Shepard, for all she was worth, tried to lighten the mood. "Look who I found."

"It's… it's good to see you," Garrus said first, and nodded his head towards his father.

"It is," his father said simply, and it was just about the most painful father-son reunion this side of the galaxy.

"Hannah," Shepard jumped in, moving closer to Garrus to brush her daughter's hair from her face. "Do you know who this is?"

The girl's head shook barely, still clinging tightly to her father, her protector.

"Look at his face, baby, he's got the same markings as your Daddy and Solana and Necalli."

It inspired Hannah long enough to lift her head to get a better view of him. The familiarity she found there made her relax half an inch, her fingers digging into her father with slightly less intensity.

"That's…" Garrus looked to his father, judging the reaction to words before he even said them. Whatever he saw there, he went with his gut. "That's my father, Hannah. He's your Grandfather." He took a step towards the man who raised him. Hannah's arms went around her father's neck, clinging tightly, as a response.

The Primarch stood stiff, but ultimately moved in a step towards his son as well. "Hello," he said with a clearing of his throat, and when there was no reply, he raised a friendly hand to the child. "I'm your Grandpa, Hannah."

Shepard was quick to rub a soothing hand to her daughter's back, a reminder that she wasn't alone with the man she saw as a stranger. Hannah stared at the proffered hand quizzically, and then lacking the daintiness or the firmness of the handshake an adult would make, she clasped her hand around one of his fingers and gave a poor imitation of the formal greeting.

"Hi."

Garrus exhaled deep.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Past. Earth.**_

"What did you do before the military?" Shepard asked, digging through a bowl of noodles with a plastic fork. Paper and plastic. That was what all their food came in these days. As it turned out, moving into one's first home with only a few belongings didn't make for a very full or practical place to live. Shepard came with model ships, a few photographs and other mementos, and some clothes. The fish, they'd left those behind for the new Commander of the Normandy. And that death-defying space hamster, he'd met his final end a few months back. It had been a burial-in-space.

"I…" A simple question, but as he really mulled over what she was asking, his mind went blank. Garrus looked up from the box he unpacked, a few of his belongings from storage and his parents' house that had made it through the war intact. Pictures. Gun parts. The chest plate of his very first hard suit. "I waited until I was old enough to join the military," he said with a self-deprecating laugh.

Mouth full, Shepard hummed in agreement. She chewed and swallowed, wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. "Me too."

"You ever realize how little we know about each other?"

She took another bite, face crinkling in displeasure at his sentiments. "Should've thought about that seven and a half months ago, Garrus." To illustrate her point, she rubbed a wide circular pattern over her abdomen, long ago swollen with child. A little over a month left now, that was all they had.

"I didn't say it was _bad_." Abandoning the box he was working on, the same ones they'd been slowly but not so diligently attempting to unpack for the last two weeks, he chose to join her on the couch. "We can do whatever we want now." A suggestive tone to his voice, he cocked his head to her. "What do you want to do?"

"Mm, not gonna happen right now, buddy." She affectionately tapped his knee. "Maybe later if I feel less like an Elcor. You said you wanted to learn to paint, didn't you?"

"Huh?" He wracked his head to what she was referencing. That was right. After the Grissom Academy. "It seems nice."

"You've got all the time in the world now." Shepard set the bowl on the nearby end table. The house had, thankfully, come somewhat furnished with a few pieces of the last owner's furniture filling some of the rooms. It would be enough to get by for awhile. "So learn to paint."

"I guess I could. We just have a lot we have to do before… you know."

"No fucking kidding. We spent over a year and a half trying to get pregnant, you would have thought we would have been more prepared than we are."

Garrus took a glance around the living room. This was only one room of the small home, and it reflected the universal state throughout the rest of it. Boxes, the few they had, were found in each room, even the hallway. Their cabinets and drawers were relatively empty, so empty in fact, that Garrus found himself missing the Normandy's mess hall when he'd opened the refrigerator and found it barren. They had to be in charge of those things from now on. No one to keep stock of food and other supplies. No one to do the cleaning.

There was a ringing through the home.

And that was right, no AI to answer incoming hails and messages.

Shepard struggled to push herself up from the couch as the sound rang through again.

"I'll get it," he offered.

"I'm already up," she replied, heading to the other room, "I've got to use the bathroom anyway."

Hurrying, she made it to the room they'd tentatively agreed would be something of an office—for what? They didn't quite know, but it was hard to get by without a private terminal and comm system. Shepard quickly hit the button on the keyboard to accept the message. They'd had a number of calls since settling in, from Liara mostly, as she'd been the one who had done the digging and found this place. She was, of course, also the person who had paid for it mostly through Shadowbroker funds. A retirement gift, she'd said, as both Shepard and Garrus had argued against it. Somehow, the Asari had won the dispute.

"Shepard," she said, waiting as the screen on the other end clicked on.

It was Garrus' father.

"Primarch—did you want me to get—"

"No, Commander, this is fine."

It took all Shepard had to not laugh at the absurdity of the situation before her. She was a few years off from forty, nearly eight months pregnant, co-habiting with a Turian, and having her first real conversation with her—husband's? Boyfriend's? Lover's? Father of her child's?—father. She managed to keep it together. "Is there something I can do for you?"

"I just wanted to confirm this was the right connection. I had to get it from my daughter, since Garrus failed to even pass on that information himself."

Shepard coughed, uncomfortable. "Yes, well, it's… correct."

"Very well, I'll—"

"Are you angry with him because of me?" Shepard blurted out, unable to control her tongue.

His image went still on the screen. "No," he responded quickly, his words almost sounding rehearsed. "You're widely respected within the Turian community, Shepard. The councilor and many generals speak highly of you."

He was dancing around the question, she was sure of it. "I'm not asking what anyone else thinks. I'm asking what _you_ think."

"I think… that many Turians who don't personally know you are going to have problem with the son of the Primarch choosing to be with a human, of all species, and choosing to raise a human child with her, unbonded."

He was clinical in his approach to her, and that made the blow of the words that much worse. She wasn't sure what she expected, especially not after the things she knew about him from Garrus, but somewhere under everything else, she'd hoped that some semblance of _family_ could be pulled out of the jumbled, confusing mess their lives all were. That had been wishful thinking.

"Well," she said, eyes squinting some and her voice a little harder, "when your government finally chooses to recognize marriages of Turians to people outside their species, we'll be waiting." Immediately, she regretted her tone. "This…" Shepard sighed and shook her head. "This isn't how I saw this going between us. It's important to me that Garrus is happy, Primarch. And to be fair, not that I think he would have listened, but if you had a problem with me and him, you should have voiced your opposition a long time ago."

"My son does what he wants, Shepard."

"He does," and there was a faint smile across her lips. "She's due in six weeks. Garrus hopes you'll come meet her, see where we live. I'd like it if you came, too."

He paused. "I'll see if I can."

The connection clicked off.

Shepard leaned against the desk and exhaled a deep breath. "_Fuck_."

After the delayed trip to the bathroom, Shepard returned to the main living space. Garrus had his omni-tool on and raised, opposite hand used to scroll through some of the presented information. His eyes lifted to her.

"Who was it?"

Shepard's skin had a pallor to it. She shook her head, letting it go. There wouldn't be anything good to come of saying otherwise right now. "Nothing important—what are you doing?"

"I got a message from Joker, something about some vids he sent me to, and I quote, 'prepare you for the delivery.' What does he mean?"

Her head too fogged, Shepard paid no mind to most of his words, instead returning to her seat on the overstuffed cushions beside him. "It's probably porn. Isn't that what it always is?"

Indeed it usually was. Garrus was a little ashamed to admit that some of his initial research into Turian-human relations had come from Joker and his precious and extensive collection. He hit play on the omni-tool.

"This… isn't porn."

Shepard raised a questioning glance to him, it taking a moment to process the words and sounds coming from the vid playing through his omni-tool. "No, no, no," she pleaded to no one in particular, although it sounded suspiciously like she was also wishing death on someone, and Shepard leaned forward, hands trying to manually power down the omni-tool on Garrus' arm.

"Shepard—what are you—"

"Turn it off!"

"Spirits, _stop_ it!"

Somewhere in the struggle, the orange glow flickered away, Shepard's body half strewn across part of his. Their eyes met.

"Promise me you won't go watch those vids." She, with his help, attempted to straighten herself back up.

"Why?"

"They're videos of people giving _birth_."

A shake of his head, his mandibles flared as he spoke. "I'm not a teenager. I know what happens."

"No," she insisted, "you've seen Turians give birth. _Not_ humans. I've been on the extranet, Garrus, I've seen vids of your women giving birth and it's a fucking walk in the park compared to what I'm going to go through."

His curiosity only increased the more she talked about it, a growing itching inkling to power up the omni-tool again, her anger be damned. "I've seen you almost dead, Shepard. I'm sure that this isn't going to be worse than that. Besides—it's going to happen in a month anyway."

"You think humans are messy as it is, wait until there's an eight pound human pushing its way out of a place _you_ barely fit inside. You know sometimes you can even tear—"

"Tear _what_?"

Shepard didn't say a word. His eyes widened on their own in understanding. "How is your species even alive after all this time?"

"You know… I really have no idea." The answer, she suspected, lay in the fact that humanity produced such great numbers to offset the ones that weren't so lucky. At one point in time, humanity had given the Krogan a run for their money.

"Shepard?" He waited until she looked to him before continuing. "Are you worried about going through with it?"

The playfulness that had been there a moment before all but completely dissipated. Shepard reached for his hand, taking one between both of hers. "Not that I have any other choice at this point, but… mostly I'm terrified something will go wrong. And if I'll be able to figure out how to be a mother once she's here."

Where he'd once just seen hardness so long ago, he saw the vulnerability she'd only really first shown to him briefly the night before Omega and then again when she'd nearly cracked at the seams before they'd headed to Earth for the final push against the Reapers. Before that, he'd only ever known the Commander, not the woman underneath.

"You'll be a good mother," he whispered and moved in, touched his hard plated lips to her cheek. It would never be just like a humans, but it was as close as he'd ever get.

And Shepard, she turned into it, touching their mouths together. She was happy to have it however she could.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Present. Eden Prime.**_

"You've grown up so fast." Liara stroked her fingers over Hannah's hair, brushing the shortened fringe of bangs from her forehead.

"Li-ar-a," said Hannah, extra emphasis on every syllable as she struggled to get the vowels just right. Like always, it never came out exactly perfect, but it was enough to be understood. "Why are we digging?"

The Asari laughed to herself, warm smile over lips a few shades darker than the rest of her vibrant blue skin. "When I was little…" It had been a story she'd told Shepard years ago, days or weeks before they thought they were to die fighting the Reapers. "…I used to do this all the time. Thought I would dig up some pieces of ancient ruins."

Hannah blinked at her aunt without a lack of full comprehension, but chose not to inquire further. She returned her attention to the ground, fingers and nails dirty as she clawed through the damp soil at the river's edge, her plastic shovels and spades abandoned just as soon as they'd been presented to her. Using her hands, at such a young age, was always much more satisfying. "Dirty." She showed her browned palms to Liara, glint of a smile over her mouth.

"Shh," Liara whispered, "I won't tell your mother if you promise not to."

She nodded in quick agreement and went back to her task. They hadn't found much of anything so far: a shiny rock worn smooth from ages of water and sediment buffing its outer surface, a tooth belonging to a native water dwelling creatures of Eden Prime. Hannah took another fistful of dirt and laid it out on the small growing mound beside her, a gleeful squeal given when she spotted the contrasting light pastel colors in the dirt.

"What'd you find?" Liara grasped the object, dusting away the soil as best she could. She reached behind her, towards the edge of the water, and rinsed what Hannah had found. It wasn't anything special, certainly not a Prothean artifact like she'd dreamed of finding as a child, or even a small object someone had lost years before that had gotten buried sometime in between. She presented it back to the girl. "It's a seashell."

Hannah smiled with enthusiasm, eager to get it back within her dirty hands even if it meant the shell would once again no longer be clean. Turning it over, the three year old examined its surface and pearlescent underside, running the pads of her fingers along the shimmers of barely there color. "Pretty."

Liara hadn't expected to find much out there, not on a planet that was so relatively young and newly inhabited compared to Thessia, but it was the thought behind it: spending time with the girl she'd considered her niece since before she'd been born, giving her parents a breather for the morning while she caught up with Hannah. It had been months since she'd seen her last. With everything she had going on, it was getting more and more difficult to get enough time to herself to venture out towards Earth. So finding a seashell, while it wasn't truly exciting to her, was still a precious memory to be kept.

"It is, Hannah." The joy on her niece's face was enough to make finding a clod of dirt or a dead bug's carapace rewarding, her excitement infectious. "Are you hungry?"

Hannah nodded, palming the seashell between her two hands.

"Then we'll get you cleaned up before we see your parents." Liara stood.

The child raised her arms in the rather universal sign for her interest in being picked up, but quickly put them down before Liara could gather her. Instead, she reached for her other small treasures, that rock and critter's tooth, filling her hands with them before she repeated the earlier gesture. Into Liara's arms she went, her head finding a comforting rest on the woman's shoulder.

"Keelah," Shepard said, and in behavior that was very much unlike the near constant restraint she'd shown as Commander, she pulled Tali into her arms. "I'm so happy for you."

Though the visor of her helmet obstructed Tali's face, the warble of her voice was enough to give away what the Quarian was feeling beneath the suit. "Th-thank you, Shepard." They released each other, and she touched a gloved hand to her stomach, protective and telling. "I haven't known for long, things could still go wrong," she replied quickly. "Keelah, after everything that happened with you before your daughter…"

Shepard rested her hand over Tali's forearm. "You can't think like that, Tali."

"No, I know," Tali shook her head, her helmet lifting to catch Shepard's face. "It worked out for you in the end anyway."

Memories of the two years prior to her daughter's birth would always be a source of hurt for Shepard, but as time put more distance between the present and the past, it was getting easier to deal with. "Is Kal happy?" She asked, lightening the mood.

"You wouldn't believe how much," she nodded. "After thinking I'd lost him on Palaven for so long… sometimes I can't believe this is where we are now. Settling Rannoch again with the Geth, starting a family. Shepard—we owe it to you."

It was a sentiment she had never grown comfortable in hearing, so Shepard simply shook her head to refute the statement. "You were there, Tali, fighting alongside me. You owe it to—" and there was a very distinct sound of the suite's door opening and closing, followed by her child's uninhibited shouts—"yourself. But speaking of…"

Hannah, her feet carrying her faster than Liara's, made a beeline across the living quarters of the suite that was temporarily held in the Shepard-Vakarian name. Her arms outstretched, she offered the contents of her palms to her mother without a care for what she was interrupting, or who her mother had been previously speaking with. "Look what we found!"

Shepard dipped her head in a silent thanks to a weary and tired looking Liara who followed closely behind. "She give you trouble?" She asked, even as she took the objects from her daughter, examining each with the kind of attention Hannah usually required of her parents in order to be satisfied.

"No, Shepard, she was perfect. Tali—did you just get in?"

While Tali answered, Shepard spoke to Hannah intimately. "A seashell?"

"For our _collection_," the girl argued, and plucked it back from her mother's hand to run her fingers over it once again. "You like it?"

"I love it," Shepard said right away, and though she would have happily told her daughter whatever she wanted to hear on any simple subject, she truly did feel the words as she spoke them. "We'll put it in the box with the others when we get home." Before Hannah could take off again, Shepard drew her attention to the other woman with them. "Hannah, do you remember Tali? You haven't seen her since you were a baby, but we've talked to her on vid-comm a few times."

Hannah looked up to the Quarian, studying her relatively human-like shape within the suit. Given who her parents were, there'd been no lack of teaching about the other species they shared the galaxy with. On Earth though, it could sometimes be hard to cross paths with some of the more exotic species in the very flesh. "What do you look like?"

Tali got down to one knee, evening the height difference between her and the child. "Well," she said, the light on her mask flickering on and off with each syllable and pause between words. "Like you, mostly." She raised her hand between them, wiggling each of the digits. "But my hands are more like your father's."

Hannah tentatively reached out with the hand empty of that beloved seashell, and rubbed her fingers over the suit covering the Quarian's three fingers. Satisfied, she returned her hand to herself, tugging nervously on the ends or her hair. Her face lit up as a new question came to mind. "Do you have hair?"

Tali laughed, the faint light of her eyes squinting beneath her helmet. "I do. It's very long now, longer than yours or your mother's."

With a stranger, Shepard might have curbed her daughter's onslaught of questions right away, if only to avoid offending someone, but Tali, of all people, would never have minded anything her daughter could have asked. She leaned down, not quite getting to her knees, but getting close enough to speak low to Hannah. "Why don't we go show Daddy what you found?"

Out on the suite's generous balcony, they found Garrus and Kaidan soaking up the warmth of the system's local sun, trading stories about the distant past. Hannah crawled onto her father's lap without warning, his hands helping to pull her up and settle her down. "Another shell?" He took it between his fingers, holding it up to the light, examining it further like he was seriously debating how rare or precious it could possibly be. "It's a beauty, that one. One of the prettiest yet, right Kaidan?"

Kaidan sat up a little straighter, setting his beer bottle on the endtable before taking the shell for himself. He examined it in a similar fashion, a process he was used to playing up for the little girl. "It really is, Han. You found this all by yourself?"

She nodded.

"Interested in selling it?" Kaidan made a move for the wallet in his pocket. "Got a couple credits with your name on them if you're willing.

Hannah just giggled, head shaking as she reached back for it, drawing it protectively to her chest. "Can't have it."

"You sure?" He continued the ruse, even going so far as taking his credit chit out and passing it between his fingers playfully. "Think of all the things you could buy yourself if you'd just sell me one little seashell."

"Stop trying to scam my daughter, Alenko," Garrus said with his own swallowed laughter. From the corner of his eye he saw the entrance of the other three women, Shepard catching his eyes when he turned. She made a deliberate jerking motion with her head back towards the interior compartments. "Hey Hannah, why don't you sit with Kaidan and Tali for awhile." Before standing, he shifted his daughter's weight from his lap over to Kaidan's. The man had his omni-tool lit up before she'd even settled fully.

"I've got some pictures for you," Kaidan said to Hannah as Tali took a seat beside them, drawing up her own omni-tool and scanning through the system for something in particular as well. "You ever seen your mom and dad when they were younger?" Hannah's interest piqued, she shook her head.

"No bad stories," Shepard said with a warning to her former lieutenant and engineering assistant.

"Course not, ma'am," he replied, slipping into the same formality he'd shown over a decade earlier. "But don't take too long, I've got something of a surprise for everyone in a few hours."

"You know how I feel about surprises," and as she stepped inside along with Liara and Garrus, her voice trailed off behind the closing doors.

Back in the main quarters, Liara raised a questioning and uneasy brow to her two old friends. "What's this about? Goddess, is something wrong?"

"No, nothing like that," Shepard was quick to say, and merely took a seat on the couch, patting the cushion beside her. Liara sat down, while Garrus followed, sitting on the edge of the coffee table before them. "We just had something we wanted to ask you while we're alone."

Garrus glanced to Shepard before beginning. "We've… ah… been thinking about this for a few years. Since Hannah was born."

"And now with the next one…"

Liara let her hand seek out Shepard's, her oddly similar hand folding into the other woman's.

"We're not saying we expect anything to happen to us," Garrus preemptively said with a shake of his head. His face was haunted with a sudden worry, the type he so rarely let others see. "But should it, and even afterward…"

Shepard squeezed Liara's hand. "When we're gone, even if it's to old age, we were hoping you'd be there to look after our girls." She breathed deep, determined to steady her voice, but the quick build up of tears in her eyes was hard to hide, even for a woman like Commander Shepard. "Take care of them when we can't anymore."

"Oh Shepard," Liara said with a sigh, and leaned in as she released her friend's hand to wrap her arms around her instead. "You never had to ask."


	6. Chapter 6

_**Past. Earth.**_

Somewhere in the periphery of his brain as he slept, Garrus could sense the world around him in a state of flux. There was the vague understanding of a light being turned on—perhaps the bathroom or hallway, it wasn't bright enough through his eyelids to be the light overhead their bed—and even the odd clatters of someone going about their business as quiet as possible but never exactly achieving true silence. He'd even felt the shift of the bed earlier, the pull of Shepard's weight sinking against the surface as she moved and then finally got up.

It didn't concern him that the clock would would read hours before sunrise and Shepard was up and about. As for the last few months, it had been something of a regularity. It wasn't the weight of being full term that was upsetting her body—not after years of practice of carrying weapons and gear and hard suit—but the off balance of it, the sore and tired muscles that never got a break from being stretched to their maximum capacity. While once upon a time he'd been reach and she'd been flexibility, the flexibility part of her along with that slim and supportive waist he loved had gone the way of Earth's dinosaurs many months before. Shepard being awake at three in the morning wasn't much of a surprise lately. In fact, it was expected, even. She'd catch up in the daytime, curled up on a couch with a pillow tucked against her stomach for support, the air warm around her.

Garrus turned over and went back to sleep, and didn't wake until he felt the bed shift again, and then the touch of her hand to his arm and shoulder, pulling needily at him.

"Garrus?" She whispered even though there was no one else in the house to wake or disturb. But in the cover of night, whispers just felt right. And necessary.

He gave a light groan in response. Since settling down with her, he'd adapted to not only desire, but also need the extra hours humans seemed to require to function properly. On the Normandy, he had often laid with her for most of the sleep she'd gotten—on the rare nights she got more than a few hours—and then gone about his business in her cabin silently, waiting for her to wake as well. But home now, on Earth, those extra hours asleep were precious. "Yeah?"

Behind him, he could hear the sound of sniffling, the creak of the bed as she continued to shift however she pleased to find things an ounce more comfortable. He rolled over onto his back, blinking his tired eyes open against the light from the hallway that illuminated the room just barely enough to see her clearly in the dark. She was sitting upright on the bedspread, kneeling but legs splayed wide so she was seated on the bed as well, like she'd been straddling something but grew too weak to keep her in place. Shepard stroked a hand over her stomach, the lower portions of it exposed as the tank-top she wore to sleep didn't quite stretch far enough to conceal and cover it completely. With wide eyes, far too awake for even her at this hour, she exhaled an uneven and shaky breath.

"Why can't I remember what happened on the Citadel?"

If he'd been longing for sleep a second ago, that urge was washed out of him on impact of her words. What happened up on the Citadel, it had been a topic of conversation much argued over as she recovered from her injuries after the end of the Reaper War. Alliance and Council alike had come to her, thankful but demanding to know what she'd done. Like so much that happened that day, though, Shepard had been a blank slate. Most of what had happened up there and in some of the hours before she'd headed up—it was blank. Save for some of the more unsavory details, like the images of bodies and stench of death; somehow those thoughts had been horrible enough to haunt her despite the localized amnesia. For weeks after she'd woken from her coma of sorts, she'd been plagued by nightmares every night. As time passed, they'd grown less and less, but Garrus knew that as early as the month before, Shepard had woken up in tears, clinging to him in desperation. What scared him most for her was that he knew she probably dreamt of it all more often than not, and just managed to hide it well enough.

"You were hurt so badly, Shepard," he said, stroking his hand over her bare thigh, the part at least where her sleep shorts didn't cover. This was a process he had down pat by now, how to sooth her when disturbed by something like this. "Just a side effect of everything."

While that had once placated her, Shepard shook her head harshly in a vehement denial. When she spoke, her words were just as unrestrained, like a screw had come loose in her and left her in a panic. "I need to know what happened up there."

Garrus sat up, blankets and sheets bunching up around his waist. "No one's ever going to know. What matters is it's over. You know that."

But Shepard didn't want to hear it, her face contorting into an expression of pain, one he'd seen on her in both times of physical and emotional stress. She rubbed the side of her stomach with slow, deliberate breaths. "I can't…I can't…" her words trailed off, strangled. And then there was the sound of her cries from the back of her throat, head lowered just a little to hide her eyes away from him directly, her hair only aiding in that fact as it fell around her face. She drew a hand upwards, pressed the back of it against her eye, wiped away the tears.

It was pitiful, all of it, and though Garrus had always admired her for the things she'd done—the things that no one else had been able to do—and was thankful to her for saving him, them, _everyone_, he'd grown more bitter in the last few years that all that weight had been put on her shoulders in the first place. No one person should have had to endure this, he thought. They should've listened to her. How might things have changed if they had? It wasn't fair that she spend the rest of her life living with the consequences of the things she'd seen and been forced to do for the rest of them. More than anything, he was glad that he had realized how much he cared for her and that she had done the same in regards to him. If he could share the burden, be there for her when the load was too much to carry… it wouldn't be enough, but it would be something.

He leaned in, body wrapping itself as closely entwined to hers as possible, arms around her as he felt the roundness of her stomach against his abdomen. _That_ was a comfort he'd miss when it was gone. She tucked her head into his neck right away, and his hand went to the back of her head, pushing through her hair. Seeing her like this never got easier.

"What if," she said, lifting her head from him, "I didn't save us all, Garrus? What if there's more coming? What if I only made things worse?" Horror was written across her eyes and features, in consideration of the thought.

"You saved us," he reassured, and set both of his hands to either side of her head, holding her steady and still. "If there ever comes a time in the future when they return… however far away, Shepard you've done your job. It's someone else's problem."

She wouldn't have it, just shook her head even with the solid feel of his hands to her scalp. Her eyes watered further and tears spilled down her cheeks, barely even bothering to wipe them away. "Cerberus made me out of _Reaper_," she said with a disgusted tone. Garrus had been with her on that mission when she'd found it out, it wasn't a new concept, but it also wasn't something they'd ever truly touched on before. "What if the Reapers did something to me when I was up there? What if I'm a pawn now? What if I'm going to do something… if I'm just waiting for the moment to invite them back here? Am I indoctrinated? Am I _Saren_?" She crumpled in his grasp, curling in on herself as she sobbed with the uncertainty of it all.

Garrus leaned forward and nuzzled his cheek and mandible into her. She hadn't been this bad in awhile. She'd mostly been angry before, screaming and yelling, throwing anything she could get her hands on, but not so utterly destroyed, ready to give in as she ran her mouth off with these unthinkable postulations. "You're not. You're still you, Shepard." He shut his eyes, breathed in the scent of her. "I would know."

Her body shook with the overwhelming onslaught of emotion, her arms curling around her middle protectively as her body tensed again. She breathed through it, even let out a groaning cry, before coming back to herself. "I can't protect her, Garrus," she said, sitting a little straighter, but not anymore put together than before. Open palms pushed up the fabric of the tanktop, soothed into the stretched skin. "I'm not strong enough anymore, what if they come back and I can't protect her?"

His hand closed over the top of one of hers at her belly, feeling the skin of her hand as well as her abdomen, their daughter. "I'll protect her with you. You know that."

"I want her to stay here forever," Shepard said with a defeated whimper. "Where no one can hurt her, where she's safe."

Garrus drew his plated lips to her cheek, mimicking the human action of kissing, then moved up to repeat the touch to her brow, her forehead, and down to the cheek on the other side. "I know, and I wish she could too, but she can't. And we've waited so long for her, aren't you ready for the last two years to finally pay off?" It had been a struggle, all of it. From finding out that her reproductive organs still worked, as best as they could at least, to having to resort to using the eggs Miranda had kept in cryo all that time after their other attempts only resulted in bloody, cramping failures. This one, Garrus had vowed, would be their last attempt. He wouldn't let Shepard continue to try and fail, especially not when he'd been the one to push her towards this in the beginning. But by some miracle, whether it was one of the human Gods or his Spirits or Liara's Goddess… this one had made it through. And soon, she'd be in their arms.

Shepard forced something of a smile at the thought, but it faded quick enough. "If something happens to her…" Her head shook again. "I won't make it through it." She looked at him with open, honest eyes. "I don't want to this time."

It stung him somewhere deep, to know the attachment she had to the child inside of her was so strong that losing her would be enough to make Shepard give up fully, once and for all. There was some small part of him that felt hurt by it, after all he'd done for her and the time they'd spent together… that having him wouldn't be enough for her. But even so, he understood. When he thought about it, really thought about it, he didn't know if he'd survive getting to hold his daughter and then one day never having that ever again—or just even never getting to hold her at all after coming this far. "You won't have to worry about that," he said, his best rendition of calm and comfort, brushing his hand over the tangles of her sleep mussed hair.

"I'm going to miss this," Shepard whispered, this time coming to palm his own hand as it rested to her stomach. She held it firm. "You talking to her every night."

He made the softest purring sound and nodded, doing his best at keeping her distracted from the maudlin thoughts that had at least temporarily given her leave. "I'll miss feeling her kick. That's something that doesn't happen with Turians, you know that, right? Too small, hide too thick, whatever it is. That's not something I ever would've felt if I wasn't with you." He touched his lips to hers, relishing in the response of her opening mouth against his. He pulled back. "I wouldn't trade this for anything."

Her eyes were still coated in a thick layer of tears, but no longer actively spilling forth. Shepard nodded in receipt of his words, thankful to hear the sentiments out loud. Despite his reassurances years before when they'd made the decision to have children this way, and even his happiness throughout her pregnancy, she'd still been captured by the deep seated worry that he'd regret the choice he made: having a human child, something that could never truly be his. But tonight, she really did believe him.

"Come lay with me," Garrus suggested, "I'll rub your back to get you to sleep."

Shepard denied him with a shake of her head, instead letting her face contort tightly again, hands back around her stomach as she took increasingly deep inhales and subsequent exhales.

"Shepard…?" He asked, worried, running his hands all over her like checking for injury or battle wounds. The moment passed though, and when Shepard relaxed again, she looked up, met his eyes.

"Can't. I've been having contractions for a few hours." Despite what was to come, she touched his face gently, like they had all the time in the world. "We've got to go."

Sometime the next evening and miles away in the nearest medical clinic, the daughter of Shepard and Vakarian neared taking her first breath. Labor had been long, slow, and painful, but in the final moments, Shepard tried her best not to let those thoughts consume her. Her hand grasped into the rougher skin of her lover's hand, she felt the touch of his forehead against the side of her head, heard his words of encouragement like they came from herself somewhere deep inside.

On three, she pushed again, the doctor promising it would be the last—although she'd been making such false assurances for the last ten minutes—and counted down the seconds until the end of the contraction, notifying Shepard of when she could take a break, a breather for a few seconds to summon the last necessary bits of strength she needed to bring the task to completion.

Shepard cried out, exhausted from not only the labor but overall lack of sleep, her muscles going slack against the hospital bed as she desperately tried to ignore the pressure and burning. She'd endured pain, the worst of it, but this was so vastly different from all the others before. For awhile, she'd been sure she would be able to endure childbirth without trouble given what she'd experienced in her line of work. But, she'd quickly realized as the contractions had gotten stronger earlier in the day, she was wholly unprepared for just what it would be. "I want Chakwas," she said with an exhausted laugh, relaxed against the arm Garrus had curled back around her shoulders.

"You'd want her yelling at you instead?" Garrus asked, and brushed away the damp and dirty hair from her face.

"She'd slap some medi-gel on me and make it all better."

"Somehow," Garrus said with a smile, "I don't think this is a job that medi-gel can fix."

They were interrupted again by the nurse and doctor, and Shepard sat up with Garrus for support. This time, unlike all the previous, really was that last and final push, given through gritted teeth and eyes clenched tight until Shepard felt the overwhelming dissipation of that pressure followed by sudden relief, as her daughter was out of her and in the doctor's waiting, gloved hands.

Immediately, Shepard sobbed openly, so unlike the middle of the night before since this time it was out of absolute joy instead of despair. The doctor laid the girl quickly on the small protective sheet over Shepard's stomach, one nurse clearing her mouth and nostrils as the other began to roughly dry her off. Sometime in the middle of it, the infant wailed loudly, shrieking as her lungs filled with oxygen for the first time, her skin pinking up with each passing second.

It was overwhelming, all of it, but Shepard didn't hesitate to reach out and touch her daughter's skin, feeling her warmth. She looked up to Garrus beside her, and though his biology didn't allow him to cry, she could see it in his eyes just how much he felt exactly like her. His mandibles flared and retracted unsteadily, plates of his face shifted in a deep awe. He almost missed the doctor offering him the chance to cut his daughter's clamped umbilical cord, but he nonverbally declined the offer anyway with a shake of his head.

With that tie from mother to daughter finally severed, one of the nurses gathered the baby up and carried her towards the side of the room, bassinet waiting.

"Where are they—?" Garrus said in a panic.

Shepard, despite how little she could comprehend anything at that moment, touched her hand to his jaw, directing his attention back to her. "It's okay. They're just making sure she's all right."

"I can _tell_ she's okay," he said gruffly, the instinctive protective side of a brand new parent coming out, "she should be with you."

She just shook her head as she smiled, and pulled him closer, touching her lips to his even as the doctor still worked between her legs. Garrus pulled back and wiped the tears from her cheeks, keeping close.

"Are you happy?" Shepard whispered, seeking the answer out on his face.

"Shepard—" He stopped, and instead whispered her first name, the one that her own parents had given her decades ago. "I can't…" His brow plates shifted in an expression of his loss of words. "You have no idea."

Swaddled in a blanket with a hat on her small head to keep her much needed heat from escaping, the nurse brought the girl back to her parents as soon as they were assured she was well. To mother's arms, the nurse first offered, but Shepard instead directed them to Garrus. "Him first," she insisted, nodding to him, making sure he understood it was truly what she wanted.

Uneasy, he accepted the bundled girl, her eyes shut after finally quieting down. This was it, the first true meeting between father and daughter, adult Turian and human infant, and unsurprisingly, the first thing he did was gently touch his forehead to his daughter's, eyes shut as he held the pose. He breathed her in, that scent of her that was absolutely unique and new and so very unlike anything he'd ever smelled before. Spirits, he knew, this was what heaven felt like. When he opened his eyes to lift his head and look back to Shepard, she was crying again, this time silently and without the heaviness of before.

"How's it feel, Dad?" She said a little coyly, somehow summoning the energy for it despite how absolutely horrible the rest of her felt. "Is she what you thought she'd be?"

Garrus looked back down to his daughter, her crinkled face and reddened skin, then back to her mother. "Better," he said, his voice tight, "she's better." And with the sound only ever heard from Turians, he was touching his forehead to his daughter's again, the softest kind of purring hum coming from the back of his throat.

When the doctor had finished with her and she felt the least bit ready to hold her daughter, Garrus set the weighted bundle in the cradle of Shepard's arms. She cooed instinctively, a finger tracing along her child's cheek and tiny jaw, even pushing back the knitted cap a little to get a peek at her hair or lack thereof, now that she was cleaned off.

"Just like yours," Garrus said, at the appearance of a small tuft of filament like hair on the infant's scalp.

Shepard nodded and pulled the cap back down. "Hello, baby," she said with a shyness to her voice, looking back to Garrus like she needed approval for her behavior as a new mother. He was just smiling wide, leaning close to watch, and Shepard supposed that was enough. "I'm…" Shepard let out a soft cry, but kept herself in check. "I'm your mother. And this," she leaned into whatever part of Garrus she could reach, nuzzling her cheek against him. "This is your father." She blinked rapidly, then glanced back to Garrus. "Dad? Daddy? What do you want to be?"

"I, uh," he said with a contemplative huff of breath, "what do you think?"

"Hmm," Shepard hummed, and ran her finger over her daughter's little puckered lips. "Daddy, I think. You'll enjoy hearing that until she gets old enough to consider something else."

"Spirits," he said with the kind of heavy sigh he felt he'd been holding for nine months. Garrus sat down on the very edge of her bedside, stroked a finger—always mindful of that talon—along his daughter's brow, as he kissed Shepard's hair. "She's so beautiful. Looks just like you."

Shepard gave a satisfied sound of agreement, unable to take her eyes off her daughter's face, especially not as she began to hesitantly blink her eyes open.

"They're blue," Garrus said quietly.

He could recall all that time ago before everything had started, making the choice on the things they wanted in a sperm donor. Blue eyes, they'd both insisted on, hoping there'd be the chance that their child could inherit—at least in spirit, rather than true genetics—the eyes of their Turian father. Shepard had asked Garrus if he thought himself to be a blonde or brunette or even a redhead, but he'd insisted they go with someone as close to her as possible in regards to that feature. Tall, as well, Shepard argued for, hoping one day her child would tower over her more like Garrus did. If it was possible, a military background of sorts, but that one didn't matter so much. She'd get enough of her aim from her mother, Garrus had said. And the last one, the last caveat Shepard had, was that she wanted someone deceased. So there'd be no question later on. Maybe it made her cruel, Shepard had worried, to take away the chance for their child to ever get to know their biological father, but she didn't want their child to grow up, looking at every man on the street like he could be that missing link. They would have a father, and so what if he was Turian? Garrus would always be that person to her child, no matter what DNA said.

"They are," she said in a moment of surprise. "I know they can change color later… but we can hope they don't." Her finger ran once again over her daughter's lips, this time the girl responded, seeking out the finger tip with all the energy she had, and then promptly suckling against it though it yielded no nourishment. "Hungry, I think," and she looked up to a nearby nurse, seeking confirmation, but the nurse was otherwise engaged a few steps away, nose buried in a data pad. "Help me," she asked of Garrus, rolling her shoulder at the sleeve of the hospital gown.

He obliged, pushing the thin fabric as best he could, and Shepard did it the rest of the way, pulling it down without concern for strangers' eyes or some innate human condition of body shame. She tugged the bra out of the way as well, and shifted the baby in her tired and weary arms, drawing her daughter up close to an exposed breast. "Just… you know. Eat," she said with a bit of a laugh, angling her daughter's face nearest the nipple of a breast that had grown larger and heavier as it prepared over the last few months for this single moment of bringing food to her body's offspring.

"Do you want me to…?" Garrus asked, feeling a bit like a voyeur even if he knew Shepard's body better than she likely did at this point. This was a human thing, a fascinating human thing he'd read about in preparation for his daughter, filling in the gaps of lack of knowledge he had when it came to all things human reproduction. In all the ways that humans were messy and fell short of evolutionary advantages of other species, they did have this one thing going for them. "…Get someone?"

Shepard, ever determined, just shook her head. "She'll get it," she said gently, and again adjusted her newborn against her, watching as she rooted instinctively, mouth opening eagerly as she sensed the touch of her mother's nipple. There was a moment of struggle between mother and daughter, the baby moving her head while Shepard trying to position her just right, before the infant latched on, cheeks and chin moving in tandem as she began her first meal.

"Fuck." Shepard's brows furrowed and she looked to Garrus, "not what I thought that would be like." But a look back down to their daughter managed to at least temporarily drown out the unfamiliar sensation of discomfort. She looked… at peace. There was no way her daughter could know thoughts like protection, comfort, mother, father. But all at once, Shepard could read them in someway on their daughter's face. Somewhere deep inside of her, the girl knew this was her mother.

Garrus reached a tentative hand forward, cupping the back of his daughter's head. "We have to give her a name."

Shepard leaned into the back of the partially upright bed, nodding as she stroked the back of her finger over the baby's cheek as she nursed. "What does she look like?"

"Like…" He took his eyes off their daughter for just a moment to look to Shepard. "Hannah." 'After your mother' he could've continued, but it needn't be said.

She reacted with more tears to her eyes. Shepard nodded. "Hannah, then. Hannah Vakarian."

But Garrus protested with a shallow shake of his head in dismissal. "Hannah Shepard-Vakarian."

"Are you sure?"

"Would it be okay," he broached the topic, one he'd been thinking on with increased frequency but had never had the guts to bring up at all until now, "if I was too? Garrus Shepard-Vakarian. You don't have to—but, me, I…uh, I'd like it."

Her hand left her daughter's cheek only to seek out his, palming his good mandible as well. "I want to be. All of us, we're a family now. We should all have the same name."

Garrus turned his head into her touch, and dryly kissed her inner wrist. He leaned forward towards their daughter, brushing his forehead to the side of her tiny, hat covered scalp. Once close, he whispered something, not low enough to not be heard, but something that the translator managed to not be able to correctly interpret.

"What was that?" Shepard asked, curious, when he finally sat up again.

"It's a blessing from the Spirits, old archaic Turian. Just something you say when a new Turian child is born. I know she's not—but she's _my_ daughter, so I thought she should have it anyway."

If he was afraid for what Shepard would think of it, he couldn't have been more off. She just nodded, smiling, and looked down to the life they'd chosen to make together. "Welcome to the world, Hannah."

The sun would be rising soon, the flickers of color rising in the sky an indicator that dawn rapidly approached. It was a warm day already, sticky and humid in a way that reminded Garrus of Palaven in the wetter seasons. Out on the back porch, the one that wrapped around two sides of the home and offered that deliriously beautiful view of the hillside and water below, he sat on a bench, feet and legs propped up on a matching outdoor armchair, made of twigs and branches woven together over a solid frame. Wicker, he'd heard Shepard call it when they moved in.

For an hour he'd been there, newborn daughter cradled within a blanket in his arms and slipping fitfully in and out of slumber. It was nice to enjoy this, the solitary silence, especially after the days that had passed with visitors both in the flesh and on a number of endless vid-comm waves. Shepard, he recalled with a smile, had promised to tear out the wiring with her bare hands if another relative stranger called the line. So far, she'd resisted the urge.

From inside the home, he heard the creak of old floorboards, something that would never have been heard on the Normandy or the Citadel for that matter, but a sound he was getting used to, nonetheless. Shepard, sleep still woven into the features of her face, not to mention her tired body—she'd never really gotten a chance to recover from the delivery, not with feeding and crying and diapers and all the rest—lingered in the open doorway, arms crossed loosely over what he knew to be very tender breasts.

"She asleep?"

Garrus shook his head, doing his best to not let his body shift with him and disturb Hannah further. With a glance down to her, he could catch her half open eyes, face contorting in a silent fussiness that he already knew was a sign of the cries to come, her balled up fist against her lips as she sucked halfheartedly to calm herself down. "I didn't want to wake you, but she's probably ready to eat."

"That's all I am," Shepard muttered jokingly, wrapping the bathrobe a little tighter over her despite the general warmth that the air held. "Food."

"You're pretty food," he said, resting his head back against the top of the back of the bench, careful not to catch his fringe, "if that's any consolation."

"Mm," she gave a hum, and if it was at all possible for a sound to be sarcastic, Shepard had just accomplished it, "I feel like a bloated, disgusting mix between a Hanar and an Elcor, but I'll take your flattery."

"It's only been a week," Garrus offered as way of an explanation for how on top of the world she didn't feel. For Turians, there was of course a recovery time, but the birth was never as grueling as he quickly realized it was for humans. That had been one of their evolutionary traits, he supposed, the ability to always be at one's best without a moment of weakness, despite how small their young could be. Humans, though, they were attached to their young from the start, and Garrus knew he'd never forget the image of Shepard nursing their daughter in the minutes that followed her birth, already forming that bond between mother and child. The three of them had been glued together since then, save for when their friends had touched down on the planet to say their hellos to the newborn, passing her around. Shepard, despite knowing Hannah was in good hands, had been particularly nervous and distressed to not be near her daughter.

Hannah let out a tentative cry, face crinkling as the discomfort in her belly grew. She didn't know much, just when she was hungry or something was an outward discomfort—like a soiled diaper or a piece of clothing fitted a little too tight. Though, there were other things she knew, like her mother's scent and voice, the little girl turning to the most calmed thing when sleeping against her mother's chest, feeling that reassuring heartbeat she'd known her whole life. Shepard insisted, though Garrus was skeptical, that Hannah knew his voice after all the talking he did to her in the womb. If she didn't, he was determined to keep reminding her of the comforting sound of his voice, so she'd never forgot.

Again, she cried, more urgent this time. Garrus looked back to Shepard. "Mom time."

Shepard shook her head, raising a finger to ask for a moment of patience, before slipping back inside. She returned a few minutes later, to her daughter's more full and heartbreaking cries, as Garrus tried helplessly to calm her as best he knew.

"What's that?" He asked.

Shepard sat down beside him, close and tight against him, as she set the bottle and towel she'd returned with to the side. She took her daughter from his arms, cooing and shhing her the whole while as she propped the infant against her shoulder. "Take your shirt off."

He gave her a stunned expression, one laden with confusion. "Wh-what?"

"Just do it," and it was an order.

Reluctantly, he obeyed, slipping off the looser fitting sleep shirt he'd put on before gathering their daughter from the bassinet temporarily kept in their bedroom to be near her. Beside him, Shepard began to slowly unwrap the little girl from her blanket, popping a few of the snaps on the thin layered one-sie she was wearing beneath it until she was down to just her diaper and socks that were only barely still on her feet after her incessant kicking. Afterwards, she transferred Hannah back into Garrus' arms, though he was suddenly stiff, without the practice he'd honed in the last week since becoming a father.

"I, uh…"

"Man up, Vakarian," she said with a wide smile that spread to her eyes, heavy lidded as they were. "She loves feeling skin to skin contact, and you're incredibly warm, so she'll be even happier than she is with me."

Still, Hannah cried, though a tad less than before. She turned her head towards her father, desperately seeking out the nipple she wanted from her mother. Shepard laid the towel over one of his shoulders and then offered the bottle to him. It was warm to the touch.

"I pumped last night. Thought I'd give it a try to see if she'd take it from the bottle so you can feed her sometimes." Shepard leaned in closely, watching over her daughter as Garrus hesitantly took the bottle, and drew the rubber nipple to the infant's mouth. She ran her palm along the back of his, giving him the direction, guidance, and reassurance he seemed to need. "Just rub it along her top lip," she said, and the girl, like always, acted on instinct, parting her lips and taking in the foreign object to sooth her aching tummy. "There we go." She kissed his mandible, a reward.

There was no trying to take his eyes off his daughter, her pale and unbelievably soft skin against his darker, slightly rougher hide and plates, as she suckled at the bottle. She unlatched once, in apparent distaste for the fake nipple versus the real thing, but quickly let her father try again, and this time remained at least satisfied enough to not give it up. She opened her eyes, and though Garrus knew her vision to not be fully developed and seeing perfectly clear just yet, Hannah stared up at him.

"See," Shepard gave a content sigh, "you got it."

Garrus finally tore his eyes from Hannah to look at Shepard. There was a softness to his face and eyes—even more than there'd been the whole week. He whispered her first name as their daughter ate.

"Hmm?" She looked back to him.

"I can't believe…" He went silent for a moment, looking back to the little girl and how her gaze never flickered from watching him, much like she did the same when nursing from her mother. "I almost _lost_ you again," Garrus said, pain and tightness in his voice.

Shepard laughed quietly. "No, that's how all births go. That was pretty good actually, I think."

"No," he shook his head, this time more urgently, "I mean after the Citadel."

Her expression grew solemn. "Yeah. I guess."

"I almost lost you. Shepard, when you walked out of that room in London…after everything we said, I was sure I'd never see you again. I didn't want to believe it, but inside of me, I knew you'd said goodbye to me. For the last time." Turians didn't cry, but wore their sorrow in other ways, made other painful sounds.

Shepard recognized the pain and ran the backs of her fingers along his scarred mandible, doing her best to comfort him in the ways she knew how. Her brow wrinkled. "Honestly… I didn't think I was coming back. I knew I would die in that fight. I'd believed it for a long time."

His mandibles flexed and clicked in remorse, deep sadness written into his very bones. "And after the Citadel was damaged… I knew it. You were gone. I didn't know how to deal with it. When I'd heard you died over Alchera that first time, it was easier to deal with. You were the Commander, a soldier, died saving your crew. But…" And he looked away, back to their daughter, her eyes cycling between open and closed as she was falling victim to sleep with not half the bottle gone. Garrus rubbed her cheek with a finger, waking her a little. She suckled harder. "I just… I felt your loss just like everyone else, even if I didn't know you as closely as some. I didn't understand it. I'm used to losing people in the military. But your death? I don't know." He released a shuddering sigh.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and pressed her forehead to his cheek, closing her eyes to the tears that welled. To say her emotions had been a rollercoaster the last few days would have been the understatement of the century.

"No one knew where your body was after the Citadel. I wanted to find it—but I was terrified at the same time, because I didn't know I could stand to see you broken and just… gone." Garrus continued, even as hard as it was to get the words out. "I wanted to bury you, make sure you finally got your peace after all."

Shepard let out a strangled cry, restrained and downplayed, but in the quiet around them, it was apparent no matter how hard she tried to fight it. She couldn't have begun to imagine the grief he'd felt back then. Trying to put herself into his shoes and imagine the situation in reverse… well, she refused to try it. It would damn near kill her just to think about it.

"It was only by chance, I mean, I don't even know why I stayed down there on Earth afterward. But something just told me to stay, help with picking up some of the pieces, making sure people were safe. And I went into that tent, Shepard," he whispered softly, "and you were there. They'd written you off already, were giving you enough painkillers to keep you numb, not that it mattered, since you hadn't been conscious since they'd found you."

"But you saved me," she replied, still her forehead to him, enjoying the soothing comfort of his scent as well as their daughter's. "Brought me back from the end."

"I almost _lost_ you," he repeated his statement from earlier. "You were almost dead, again. And now you're not. Now… now we have a daughter. And she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I can't believe it."

"I thought," she started, and stopped, readying her own confession. "For the longest time I thought that maybe what Cerberus brought back wasn't _me_. That I was an impostor… a copy. Some impressive VI underneath some skin. But having _her_," her head shook, burying her face into his neck. "I know I'm the woman that I was. I know I've always been her."

"You always were," he said with confident reassurance. "I always knew you were."

She lifted her head, forcibly turning his towards her though he didn't resist. Her mouth pressed hard to his, desperate to feel him, taste him, breathe all of him in. "I love you," she said against the edge of the plates that formed the frontmost portion of his mouth. "I've always loved you. So fucking much, Garrus. So much."

He breathed out her given name on an exhale, eyes shut in the most contentment he'd ever felt in his life. Serenity, that was the word. This was absolute serenity. "I love you. Both of you."

"Always stay with me," she whispered, pulling back just enough to meet his eyes. Her hand strayed to their daughter in his arms, palm rubbing against a stretch of the girl's bare flesh. "She needs you now, Garrus. Your daughter needs you. And—" She paused on her words, watching their little girl for a moment, the child she never wanted until she'd been with him. "I need you. Stay with us always."

There was no question in the way he nodded, eyes on the woman he loved. "You and me, Shepard."

"You and me."


	7. Chapter 7

_**Present. Eden Prime.**_

Kaidan, true to his word, had a surprise for Shepard. And as she gazed up to the sky, hand held over her eyes to block out the sun as they stood on one of the pedestrian platforms at the nearby Docks, Shepard knew what it was. Immediately. Instantly. There was no denying the shape of that ship. It was the Normandy.

"How'd you—?" She asked, a loss for words.

"Being a Rear Admiral now has some sway in the Alliance. Plus," he said with a clearing of the throat. "We both know the person who's just been promoted to Commander of the Normandy." He saw her face grow in confusion, a clear sign she was trying to backtrack over any Alliance messages that had been passed her way as of late in an attempt to figure out the answer to what seemed to be a riddle. "Don't bother, Shepard," he shook his head, "it hasn't even been formally announced yet."

The ship, still as beautiful as ever—and by the look of her, had a fresh paint job—finally settled down at the docking platform ahead of them. Shepard moved quick, trying to be the first one out of the pack of long-time friends to reach the old girl. The Normandy had a dubious history after Shepard had turned in for her leave. She was still a beautiful ship, top notch in a lot of specifications, but needing sometime in dry dock to get her back into tip-top shape and out into space to be doing what she was meant to do in the first place. For a few years, at least until after Hannah's first birthday, it had remained Command-less as it was restored to pristine condition. Joker and EDI, she'd known, had been the ones to take lead on her restoration and upgrades. After that, the Normandy had been placed under the care of a few people in the Alliance, even a high-ranking Turian for awhile, but nothing permanent. Not until now.

Shepard was, until the airlock door opened, certain that she'd hate whoever was playing mother to her first baby girl.

Standing in the open doorway, Alliance uniform pressed and polished, was James Vega. N7, and now, Commander of the Normandy SR-2.

Shepard let out a boisterous laugh at the image, and without a seconds worth of hesitation from either of them, they gathered one another up in their arms.

"Nice to see you too, Lola," he said, releasing her.

"Vega, you son of a bitch, you always wanted to get your hands on my ship, didn't you?" Her cheeks had already begun to ache from the wide smile she wore.

"Hey—hey. You've got to watch your language now," he admonished, and tipped his head in the direction of the others as they approached, particularly Garrus and the three year old in his arms. "You're a mother, Lola."

"Jimmy Vega," Garrus said with a smile, though his voice teased just a bit as well, "from pole dancer to Commander. That's impressive, especially for you."

"Scars," Vega said with shake of his head, reaching out to shake the Turian's free hand. "Got the Commander pregnant again? You ever going to give her a break?"

He did the Turian's equivalent of a human's blushing, facial plates shifting, while he audibly had trouble finding the words. He coughed. "You know that's not actually how it works for her and I, right? Or did you miss that biology lesson?"

With a grin, Vega just patted Garrus firmly on the back. "Yeah it is, Scars. That's exactly how it works."

Garrus would never admit it, but Vega's willingness to see him as the father to Shepard's children in _every_ way, even just so he could get in a good teasing, made Garrus swell with a bit of pride.

"And Lola Jr. You remember me?" James asked, his attention on Hannah, quickly moving in to tickle at her neck, her arms, the girl reduced to squirming giggles in her father's grasp. "I thought so. Now…" Vega turned to the rest of the people that had once been that very ship's crew. "…_everyone_ get on the ship."

After the reunions had been had, the tours been taken, and Shepard had thoroughly dressed down Vega a dozen and a half times for the way he was running _her_ ship, the group of old friends found time to settle down in the lounge. Those that could drink, had, and those that couldn't imbibe, had found themselves just as tired and worn out by the day—save for EDI, of course, though her synthetic humanoid form joined the rest of them just the same.

On one of the couches, Shepard was curled up against Garrus, head to his neck while his arm was held around her shoulders. Hannah, the first of them all to give into the need to nap, was draped across the laps of both of her parents, contentedly finding an early bedtime against the people that raised her.

Joker passed Vega another open beer, despite the fact that there were probably thirty regulations that said the ship's main pilot and Commander shouldn't ever be intoxicated, even while off duty. He took a final, limping step, and sat back down on the chair he'd previously vacated.

"Say, Vega, I've been thinking."

Vega laughed. "Don't hurt yourself now. I thought you just made EDI do all the thinking for you?"

EDI opened her mouth to speak, but Vega waved her off before she got a word in edgewise.

"Of all the organics in the galaxy…" Joker continued on, taking a sip of his beer as his gaze settled on the Shepard-Vakarian family slumbering away together across the room. "I mean, Krogan, Turian, Batarian, even Thresher Maw, it's been generally agreed upon lately that Commander Shepard's got the biggest balls, right?"

There was no denying it, and Vega nodded in agreement, downing a hefty portion of the yeasty alcohol. "Biggest cajones I've ever seen, on that one."

"But I'm thinking we've all been wrong about this."

A single brow raised, skin wrinkling between them, James leveled a questioning glance towards Joker. "_Who_ beats Shepard? Even on a bad day, no one comes close."

"In a fight, sure. But we've been missing someone," he said, nudging his cap-wearing head towards the Turian occupant of the room. "Gotta have huge ones to be the person that props her up when she needs it."

The pilot had a point, Vega inwardly acknowledged. Would Shepard have been able to make it through the weeks leading up to the final showdown with the Reapers without her Turian there beside her? Part of him knew Shepard would have, no questions asked. But would she have had a reason to keep breathing after it all? No, he knew, not without him.

"Not to mention," Vega said confidently, "what person gets a woman like that pregnant and lives to tell the tale?"

* * *

_Author: I have since written a follow-up to this story (and Uncle). 'Mom' is listed in my profile with my other Mass Effect fics._


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